About 4.78 billion text messages that people had sent to the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) as part of the nation’s COVID-19 prevention efforts have been deleted, the National Audit Office said on Friday.
The center had asked people to send it a message with location data when entering stores and other widely frequented places from 2021 to last year, as it sought to trace the contacts of all confirmed COVID-19 cases.
People were asked to scan a QR code at location entrances, prompting an automatically generated message containing the number that the CECC had assigned to the venue to pop up on their smartphone.
Photo: Chien Li-chung, Taipei Times
Sending the messages to the center’s 1922 hotline was free of charge.
The office said in a statementthat the National Communications Commission (NCC) and telecoms had helped set up databases of the hotline’s location data.
The data helped local health departments trace the movements of people infected with COVID-19 and notify those who had been near them, it said.
About 4.78 billion automatically generated messages had been sent to the hotline from May 2021 to May last year, the office said.
However, the office said that oversight over the database had at times been insufficient.
“In May last year, we found that the National Communications Commission did not check all data storage locations to see whether the text messages were completely deleted, including their main and backup servers,” the office said.
“Some disease prevention agencies accessed text messages in databases using private computers and mobile devices. The messages on the non-governmental devices could still be downloaded even after the government had stopped requiring people to access the 1922 text messages,” it said.
The Executive Yuan’s Cybersecurity Department, which in August last year became the Administration of Cybersecurity under the Ministry of Digital Affairs, at the time failed to conduct an external audit to ensure that messages were completely deleted or destroyed, exposing the data to the risk of being leaked to a third party through improper use, the office said.
After finding the oversight lapses, the office continued to track the progress that agencies made in erasing the text messages, it said.
As of the end of last year, the NCC had terminated its contracts with telecoms, and ensured that databases were closed and no messages were in them, it said.
The CECC also ensured text messages downloaded by local government officials had all been destroyed, the office said.
“The Administration of Cybersecurity has listed management systems for electronic disease prevention data as an item for cybersecurity evaluation,” the office said, adding that the evaluation would “lower the risk of personal data being leaked to third parties.”
A Keelung high school on Saturday night apologized for using a picture containing a Chinese flag on the cover of the senior yearbook, adding that it has recalled the books and pledged to provide students new ones before graduation on Thursday. Of 309 Affiliated Keelung Maritime Senior High School of National Taiwan Ocean University graduates, 248 had purchased the yearbook. Some students said that the printer committed an outrageous error in including the picture, while others said that nobody would notice such a small flag on the cover. Other students said that they cared more about the photographs of classmates and what was
GOING INTERNATIONAL: Rakuten Girls squad leader Ula Shen said she was surprised that baseball fans outside of Taiwan not only knew of them, but also knew their names Major League Baseball’s (MLB) Oakland Athletics on Saturday hosted its first Taiwanese Heritage Day event at the Oakland Coliseum with a performance by Taiwanese cheerleading squad the Rakuten Girls and a video message from Vice President William Lai (賴清德). The Rakuten Girls, who are the cheerleaders for the CPBL’s Rakuten Monkeys, performed in front of a crowd of more than 2,000 people, followed by a prerecorded address by Lai about Taiwan’s baseball culture and democratic spirit. Taiwanese pitcher Sha Tzu-chen (沙子宸), who was signed by the Athletics earlier this year, was also present. Mizuki Lin (林襄), considered a “baseball cheerleading goddess” by Taiwanese
WAY OF THE RUKAI: ‘Values deemed worthy often exist amid discomfort, so when people go against the flow, nature becomes entwined with our lives,’ a student said “Run, don’t walk” after your dreams, Nvidia cofounder and chief executive officer Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) told National Taiwan University (NTU) graduates yesterday, as several major universities held in-person graduation ceremonies for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic. “What will you create? Whatever it is, run after it. Run, don’t walk. Remember, either you’re running for food, or you are running from becoming food. Oftentimes, you can’t tell which. Either way, run,” he said. Huang was one of several tech executives addressing graduating students at Taiwanese universities. National Chengchi University held two ceremonies, with alumnus Patrick Pan (潘先國), who is head of Taiwan
A 14-legged giant isopod is the highlight of a new dish at a ramen restaurant in Taipei and it has people lining up — both for pictures and for a bite from this bowl of noodles. Since “The Ramen Boy” launched the limited-edition noodle bowl on Monday last week, declaring in a social media post that it had “finally got this dream ingredient,” more than 100 people have joined a waiting list to dine at the restaurant. “It is so attractive because of its appearance — it looks very cute,” said the 37-year-old owner of the restaurant, who wanted to be
RSS