CIPP-A Certified Information Privacy Professional/Asia (CIPP/A) Questions and Answers

SCENARIO – Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

Fitness For Everyone ("FFE") is a gym on Hong Kong Island that is affiliated with a network of gyms throughout Southeast Asia. When prospective members of the gym stop in, call in or submit an inquiry online, they are invited for a free trial session. At first, the gym asks prospective clients only for basic information: a full name, contact number, age and their Hong Kong ID number, so that FFE's senior trainer Kelvin can reach them to arrange their first appointment.

One day, a potential customer named Stephen took a tour of the gym with Kelvin and then decided to join FFE for six months. Kelvin pulled out a registration form and explained FFE's policies, placing a circle next to the part that read "FEE and affiliated third parties" may market new products and services using the contact information provided on the form to Stephen "for the duration of his membership." Stephen asked if he could opt-out of the marketing communications. Kelvin shrugged and said that it was a standard part of the contract and that most gyms have it, but that even so Kelvin's manager wanted the item circled on all forms. Stephen agreed, signed the registration form at the bottom of the page, and provided his credit card details for a monthly gym fee. He also exchanged instant messenger/cell details with Kelvin so that they could communicate about personal training sessions scheduled to start the following week.

After attending the gym consistently for six months, Stephen's employer transferred him to another part of the Island, so he did not renew his FFE membership.

One year later, Stephen started to receive numerous text messages each day from unknown numbers, most marketing gym or weight loss products.

Suspecting that FFE shared his information widely, he contacted his old FFE branch and asked reception if they still had his information on file. They did, but offered to delete it if he wished. He was told FFE's process to purge his information from all the affiliated systems might take 8 to 12 weeks. FFE also informed him that Kelvin was no longer employed by FFE and had recently started working for a competitor. FFE believed that Kelvin may have shared the mobile contact details of his clients with the new gym, and apologized for this inconvenience.

Which of the following types of text messages are permissible, regardless of Stephen's withdrawal of consent?

SCENARIO – Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

Delilah is seeking employment in the marketing department of Good Mining Private Limited, an industry leader in drilling mines in Singapore. Delilah, while filling in the standard paper application form, is asked to provide details about emergency contacts, medical history, blood type and her insurance policy. These fields need to be filled in no matter which department Delilah applies to. The form also asks Delilah to expressly consent to the collection, use and disclosure of her personal data.

A week after submitting the form, Delilah is invited by Evan, the Director of Marketing at Good Mining, to coffee. Just before Delilah leaves, she gives her business card containing her current business contact information to Evan. Evan then uses the business card to add Delilah's details to Good Mining's business development database, which is kept on a local server. Good Mining uses the database to inform people about networking and client events that Good Mining organizes.

Why is Good Mining Private's standard form NOT compliant with Singapore's data protection law?

According to India's IT Rules 2011, a body corporate operating in India is required to appoint what kind of authority?

How are the scope of Singapore's Personal Data Protection Act and the scope of India's IT Rules similar?

In what case would a foreign company NOT be liable for breaches of Singapore's PDPA?

SCENARIO – Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

Bharat Medicals is an established retail chain selling medical goods, with a presence in a number of cities throughout India. Their strategic partnership with major hospitals in these cities helped them capture an impressive market share over the years. However, with lifestyle and demographic shifts in India, the company saw a huge opportunity in door-to-door delivery of essential medical products. The need for such a service was confirmed by an independent consumer survey the firm conducted recently.

The company has launched their e-commerce platform in three metro cities, and plans to expand to the rest of the country in the future. Consumers need to register on the company website before they can make purchases. They are required to enter details such as name, age, address, telephone number, sex, date of birth and nationality – information that is stored on the company's servers. (Consumers also have the option of keeping their credit card number on file, so that it does not have to be entered every time they make payment.) If ordered items require a prescription, that authorization needs to be uploaded as well. The privacy notice explicitly requires that the consumer confirm that he or she is either the patient or has consent of the patient for uploading the health information. After creating a unique user ID and password, the consumer's registration will be confirmed through a text message sent to their listed mobile number.

To remain focused on their core business, Bharat outsourced the packaging, product dispatch and delivery activities to a third party firm, Maurya Logistics Ltd., with which it has a contractual agreement. It shares with Maurya Logistics the consumer name, address and other product-related details at the time of every purchase.

If consumers underwent medical treatment at one of the partner hospitals and consented to having their data transferred, their order requirement will be sent to their Bharat Medicals account directly, thereby doing away with the need to manually place an order for the medications.

Bharat Medicals takes regulatory compliance seriously; to ensure data privacy, it displays a privacy notice at the time of registration, and includes all the information that it collects. At this stage of their business, the company plans to store consumer information indefinitely, since the percentage of repeat customers and the frequency of orders per customer is still uncertain.

When collecting personal data, Bharat Medicals does NOT need to inform the consumer of what?

SCENARIO – Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

Fitness For Everyone ("FFE") is a gym on Hong Kong Island that is affiliated with a network of gyms throughout Southeast Asia. When prospective members of the gym stop in, call in or submit an inquiry online, they are invited for a free trial session. At first, the gym asks prospective clients only for basic information: a full name, contact number, age and their Hong Kong ID number, so that FFE's senior trainer Kelvin can reach them to arrange their first appointment.

One day, a potential customer named Stephen took a tour of the gym with Kelvin and then decided to join FFE for six months. Kelvin pulled out a registration form and explained FFE's policies, placing a circle next to the part that read "FEE and affiliated third parties" may market new products and services using the contact information provided on the form to Stephen "for the duration of his membership." Stephen asked if he could opt-out of the marketing communications. Kelvin shrugged and said that it was a standard part of the contract and that most gyms have it, but that even so Kelvin's manager wanted the item circled on all forms. Stephen agreed, signed the registration form at the bottom of the page, and provided his credit card details for a monthly gym fee. He also exchanged instant messenger/cell details with Kelvin so that they could communicate about personal training sessions scheduled to start the following week.

After attending the gym consistently for six months, Stephen's employer transferred him to another part of the Island, so he did not renew his FFE membership.

One year later, Stephen started to receive numerous text messages each day from unknown numbers, most marketing gym or weight loss products.

Suspecting that FFE shared his information widely, he contacted his old FFE branch and asked reception if they still had his information on file. They did, but offered to delete it if he wished. He was told FFE's process to purge his information from all the affiliated systems might take 8 to 12 weeks. FFE also informed him that Kelvin was no longer employed by FFE and had recently started working for a competitor. FFE believed that Kelvin may have shared the mobile contact details of his clients with the new gym, and apologized for this inconvenience.

Which of the following FFE data retention policies would be permitted under Section 26 of the Personal Data (Privacy) Ordinance and Hong Kong Data Protection Principle 2 regarding accuracy and retention?

SCENARIO – Please use the following to answer the next QUESTION:

Dracarys Inc. is a large multinational company with headquarters in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A. Dracarys began as a small company making and selling women's clothing, but rapidly grew through its early innovative use of online platforms to sell its products. Dracarys is now one of the biggest names in the industry, and employs staff across the globe, and in Asia has employees located in both Singapore and Hong Kong.

Due to recent management restructuring they have decided, on the advice of external consultants, to open an office in India in order to centralize its call center as well as its internal human resource functions for the Asia region. Dracarys would like to centralize the following human resource functions in India:

1.The recruitment process;

2.Employee assessment and records management;

3.Employee benefits administration, including health insurance.

Dracarys will have employees on the ground in India managing the systems for the functions listed above. They have been presented with a variety of vendor options for these systems, and are currently assessing the suitability of these vendors for their needs.

The CEO of Dracarys is concerned about the behavior of her employees, especially online. After having proprietary company information being shared with competitors by former employees, she is eager to put certain measures in place to ensure that the activities of her employees, while on Dracarys' premises or when using any of Dracarys' computers and networks are not detrimental to the business.

Dracarys' external consultants are also advising the company on how to increase earnings. Dracary's management refuses to reduce production costs and compromise the quality of their garments, so the consultants suggested utilizing customer data to create targeted advertising and thus increase sales.

Dracary's existing client data sets have been anonymised but the CEO is concerned about re-identification and the risks of using the data for further analysis.

What should the CEO do?

Besides the Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA), which of the following is a potential source of privacy protection for Singapore citizens?

In Hong Kong, which of the following are exempt from personal data access requests until after the project to which the data is related has been concluded?