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.”
Taipei has once again made it to the top 100 in Oxford Economics’ Global Cities Index 2025 report, moving up five places from last year to 60. The annual index, which was published last month, evaluated 1,000 of the most populated metropolises based on five indices — economics, human capital, quality of life, environment and governance. New York maintained its top spot this year, placing first in the economics index thanks to the strength of its vibrant financial industry and economic stability. Taipei ranked 263rd in economics, 44th in human capital, 15th in quality of life, 284th for environment and 75th in governance,
A former officer in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who witnessed the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre has warned that Taiwan could face a similar fate if China attempts to unify the country by force. Li Xiaoming (李曉明), who was deployed to Beijing as a junior officer during the crackdown, said Taiwanese people should study the massacre carefully, because it offers a glimpse of what Beijing is willing to do to suppress dissent. “What happened in Tiananmen Square could happen in Taiwan too,” Li told CNA in a May 22 interview, ahead of the massacre’s 36th anniversary. “If Taiwanese students or
Greenpeace yesterday said that it is to appeal a decision last month by the Taipei High Administrative Court to dismiss its 2021 lawsuit against the Ministry of Economic Affairs over “loose” regulations governing major corporate electricity consumers. The climate-related lawsuit — the first of its kind in Taiwan — sought to require the government to enforce higher green energy thresholds on major corporations to reduce emissions in light of climate change and an uptick in extreme weather. The suit, filed by Greenpeace East Asia, the Environmental Jurists Association and four individual plaintiffs, was dismissed on May 8 following four years of litigation. The
The New Taipei City Government would assist relatives of those killed or injured in last month’s car-ramming incident in Sansia District (三峽) to secure compensation, Mayor Hou You-yi (侯友宜) said yesterday, two days after the driver died in a hospital. “The city government will do its best to help the relatives of the car crash incident seek compensation,” Hou said. The mayor also said that the city’s Legal Affairs, Education and Social Welfare departments have established a joint mechanism to “provide coordinated assistance” to victims and their families. Three people were killed and 12 injured when a car plowed into schoolchildren and their
RSS