MANILA, Philippines — The National Privacy Commission said Friday it summoned 67 more online lenders accused of mishandling borrowers' data.
In a statement, the NPC said it ordered the operators of lending apps to appear before the commission and present their defense.
Failure to comply with the order could result to a ban on their processing of personal data and the elevation of the complaints to the commission for decision, the privacy body said.
The NPC’s order was specifically addressed to operators of the following online apps:
- Akulaku
- Batis Loan
- Cash bus
- Cash flyer
- Cash loan
- Cash moto
- Cash to go
- Cash warm
- Cashafin
- Cashaku
- Cashalo
- Cashaso
- Cashmoney loan
- Cashope
- Cashwhale
- Crazy Loan
- Credit coin
- Credit peso
- Crutchpil
- First lending
- Flash cash
- Happy cash
- Hello papaya
- JK Quick Cash Lending
- Kwago
- Lalapeso (Mintwagon Lending Corp)
- Lending cash
- Light credit
- Loan champ
- Loan motto
- Loan wallet
- Mabilis cash
- Mango cash
- Mango loan
- Mcmpire
- Megaloan
- MF cash (Microdot Lending Corporation)
- Moola lending
- One cash
- Online loans Pilipinas
- Pautang peso
- Pera advance
- Pera express
- Pera lending
- Pera Pocket (Rainbow Cash)
- Pera4u
- Peso legend
- Peso lending
- Peso now
- Peso online
- Peso Q
- Peso to Go
- Peso tree
- Peso wallet
- Peso.ph
- Peso2go
- Pesomine
- Pesos ph
- Pesos.ph
- Pinoy cash
- Pinoy peso
- Pondo pocket
- QCash
- Sell loan
- Super cash
- Super peso
- Utang pesos
According to the complaints received by the NPC, online lenders allegedly accessed and used mobile phonebooks of the victims without their consent.
Using the phonebook data, the online lenders allegedly informed people in the contact list that they were named as co-makers or character references by borrowers.
In some reports, these contacts were even asked to settle the loan.
“Our investigation team is committed in attending to all the complaints filed against online lending apps. However, to date, only the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and the developers behind the 67 apps are identifiable,” Privacy Commissioner Raymund Enriquez Liboro said.
“They have no known company name and business address, nor has anyone appeared before the Commission to represent them. Our investigators are aware that some of these online lending apps are just existing in the cloud,” he added. — Ian Nicolas Cigaral