In today’s e-commerce world, customers almost can’t help but share a considerable amount of their personal data to businesses. It has come to the point where some people take this standard as a norm that we all have to submit to as we feel powerless towards it. Slowly, we start to devalue our personal data. This could become a blessing for businesses to help improve their practice. But what about the well-being of the consumers?

We often rely on third parties, most commonly the government, to protect us from possible injustice and disadvantage we could be subject to because of the misuse of our data. Thus, to some extent, I believe government policies towards customer data protection can be seen as a reflection of how much the privacy and protection of personal data is valued in that country. As I read through this article, I was pleasantly surprised to find that Indonesia have a fairly strong regulations in place for this issue and seem to follow at least the best practice in Asian countries for most of its policies. As an Indonesian myself, I have always been curious of the cyber crime policies in place as the Indonesian e-commerce industry is developing at a rapid pace. For example, we can see that from the table below, offenders can be penalized for a 6 to 10 years of imprisonment, which is much higher compared to other Asian countries listed. However, I also know that Indonesian laws will only become powerful when the regulatory body actually enforce them and continuously monitor the actions of related parties. Thus, we should not only rely on government policies, but also encourage regulatory bodies to constantly show a strong hold of the market to protect us all.

Source: http://www.techinasia.com/data-transfer-asia/