Voters Get Spammed

I saw this on Facebook yesterday and just wanted to share it with everybody. 

As you will have already known by now, BN have been bombarding new voters with text messages at every opportunity to tell these Malaysians how wonderful BN are! 

Whether it is a birthday, a festivity (e.g. Christmas, Lunar New Year) or any event that may be regarded as important, you will definitely hear from them as the pix on the left shows. 

You wonder how they got your phone number but then again, you shouldn’t at all be surprised because this is Malaysia! The Personal Data Protection Act which was passed by Parliament in 2010 only came into force – if I am not mistaken – on January 01, 2013. This particular law is aimed at preventing abuse of personal data of citizens for commercial purposes. And it is deemed illegal for corporate entities or even individuals to sell personal information or allow the use of data by third parties

But this won't stop BN'. I'm sure they'll argue that their message(s) is not commercial in nature. What they are doing (i.e. sending unwelcomed text messages or a better word is spamming) is government business. Or that the message(s) is a public service announcement. BN are taking advantage of every means at their disposal to rally Malaysians on their side. After all, GE13 is fast approaching.

On Wednesday, I was at Level 12, Bangunan TH, Uptown 3 in Damansara Utama to be the speech evaluator for a Toastmaster re-attempting her CC speech #7. The Lafarge Malayan Cement Toastmasters meeting was a decent meeting all round and I would award it a score of 6 over 10.

And yesterday, Sunway University Toastmasters put up a demo meeting as part of their recruitment initiative. 

It was very well-attended and I am hopeful we can sign up at least 12 new members. I talked to some of the students and they came from a plethora of programs such as AUSMAT, Psychology, Sunway TES, Actuarial Studies, Business Studies and many others. 

Congrats to Kenneth Ho, Nawal Lyana, Dina Kassim, Marilyn Lai and others who did an awesome job organizing it. 

And thanks to other Toastmasters (from CIMA, Taman Indrahana, Friendship, Monash University, Taylor’s University and Puchong English) who came to give much-needed support. 

Great job, people!