KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 30 — Communications and Digital Minister Fahmi Fadzil has put two agencies on the tail of the latest data leak allegation involving some 13 million account holders from Malaysia’s largest bank, the Election Commission (EC) and satellite broadcaster Astro.

The first time minister who has made personal data protection one of his priorities after taking office last month sicced the CyberSecurity Malaysia and the Personal Data Protection Department after being tagged by a user on Twitter.

“This is a serious allegation, involving a large amount of data,” he tweeted this morning, agreeing with the fellow tweeter Pendakwah Teknologi who had raised the issue to his attention.

“I will ask CyberSecurity Malaysia, JPDP to investigate if the data leak involving those parties really happened, and take action based on the law,” he added.

JPDP is the Malay abbreviation for the Personal Data Protection Department under Fahmi’s ministry.

In an early morning tweet today, Pendakwah Teknologi posted an online thread on a forum titled “13 Millions [sic] Malaysian Bank Leak (MayBank, SPR, Astro)”.

The post attached a number of photos that showed lists of personal information such as names, addresses, and phone numbers purportedly of account holders from Astro, Maybank and the EC, better known by its Malay abbreviation SPR.

Malay Mail is contacting the three bodies for comment.

Malaysia has seen a number of data leak incidents earlier this year, including a breach of the government's online salary system by cybercriminals who might have stolen one million sets of personal data as well as two million salary slips in September.

Shortly after being sworn in as minister, Fahmi had promised to protect the personal data of users in this country from being exposed to fraud or information theft.

He said the country has lost more than 100 million sets of personal data since 2017, which have been stolen by various irresponsible parties.