It is not enough for the consumer to call a phone number and say what they want to advertise, but they have to create an account on the ANPC online platform, then scan their ID, face and retina. All personal data, including biometrics, go to a database of the private company that manages them, based on a digitization project signed by the former president of the Authority, just before he retired from office, at the beginning of this year. Such procedures are also done at banking institutions, for those who want to do online operations, or at companies that make transactions with cryptocurrencies, but even in their case there is the option of signing the documents at the company’s headquarters.
From a simple complaint to the Consumer Protection, personal and biometric data were provided to a company that stores them on behalf of the state authority. In fact, all digitization projects that have been implemented in Romanian state institutions have the same problem with personal data reaching private companies.
Facial recognition and retina scanning are at least useless, in the case of complaints from a consumer who just wants to report the abuse of an economic agent or an irregularity. Even the ID scan goes far beyond the normalcy of such a situation, but the next steps in the online procedure, i.e. the facial and retina scan, can be considered abusive.
ANPC sources explained to Jurnalul that when the digitization project was signed, only the former president of the authority agreed with it and he even hurried to give his signature before giving up his position to run. It is a European project that was implemented without being promoted, in order not to cause a scandal, as it is both about a very complicated procedure, which leads many to give up asking for state help in possible conflicts with economic agents, and about biometric data that is required.
The number of complaints drops dramatically
The same sources also say that the implementation of this project has already created problems for the authority, because complaints are no longer filed and fraudsters are encouraged to commit fraud. Especially in online commerce, more and more such problems arise, if no more complaints are filed by deceived customers.
At a time when the Romanian market had reached maturity and a situation of normality, following the controls made by ANPC based on complaints from customers, the digitization project did more harm than good, taking us as a country backwards, in the 90s, because all economic agents who want to cheat their customers can do it unhindered, without being fined or imprisoned by ANPC and even without paying damages.
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Source: jurnalul.ro
