KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 6 ― The Education Ministry has confirmed personal details of possibly hundreds of thousands of secondary school leavers have been leaked to a private higher learning institution and have mounted an inquiry.
According to news reports, details about the students' parents, their home addresses, phone numbers and the monthly salaries of the parents of some 300,000 SPM and STPM students were leaked to a private institution for marketing purposes.
The data was used by then used by the unnamed institution to call the parents to promote their courses.
A police report on the leak was filed by the ministry’s Daily School Management Department director Abdullah Mad Yunus at the Putrajaya district police headquarters yesterday, Malay daily Utusan Malaysia reported today.
“The ministry had been aware of this issue since December 30 and we have to find out the cause,” he was quoted saying.
He said that the ministry is hopeful that the police would find the culprit behind the leaks.
The ministry is also checking if the leak was from within, its director-general Datuk Seri Dr Khair Mohamad Yusof was also reported saying.
