CITAD condemns collection of social media handles of customers by banks
TECHDIGEST – Centre for Information Technology and Development, CITAD, has condemned the collection of social media handles of customers by banks.
CITAD made the condemnation recently at Kano office through press statement signed by the Executive Director of the organisation, Yunusa Zakari Ya’u.
It could be recalled that in the last three weeks, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu accented to the Data Protection Law. The intention of the Act is to protect privacy and personal data of the citizens. Among the mechanisms put are to minimize the extraction of personal data from people, to provide a limit to how long it can be stored before destruction and provide for the consent of data subjects in agreeing to part with data about themselves.
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CITAD stated that It is not clear what value social media handles will add to the customer portfolio which currently has such unique identifiers as NIM, biometric details, emails, phone number, etc. Collecting social media handles is therefore in the class of over specification, requiring data more than that is needed for the banks to handle their relationship with their customers.
“By mandating banks and other financial institutions to collect social media handles, this will make banks to demand that all account operators must have social media handles. This amounts to compelling citizens to open social media accounts even when they do not see its use.
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“Given the multiplicity of social media platforms, this will place unnecessary burden to many people. Why should people, against their wishes be forced to register on social media accounts?
” Is the CBN acting on behalf of platform providers who make money out of accounts that citizens operate on their platforms?
“Who bears the costs of these handles when, as Twitter for example is contemplating to start charging for accounts?”
CITAD also stated this new policy by banks will further increase the number of people who are financially excluded, a number that is ridiculously large even as people who have no social media accounts will then not be allowed to operate bank accounts. Rather than the CBN to focus its attention on how it will promote the financial inclusion of those who are identity excluded (due to lack of digital infrastructure to capture these in the national identity management number registration), the CBN is looking for easy way to join the bandwagon of government agencies that want to penalize free expression in the social media platforms.
“This directive usurped the powers of the Nigeria Data Protection Commission which has the powers as provided in the Article that give the Commission the powers to by “regulation prescribe types of personal data and processing to be exempted from application” of the Act.
“Since the Act came into effect, social media handles have not been classified as a data that can be exempted from the application of the Act and if the CBN feels that should be done, it should submit a request and following a public debate on the request, the Nigeria Data Protection Commission can then make a ruling on it. But until that is done, the CBN directive is illegal, and in contravention of the Data Protection Act,” CITAD added.
