Valenzuela City Rep. Wes Gatchalian has filed a bill seeking to criminalize identity theft and fraud such as the use of personal data to make fake accounts on social media to attack a person’s identity.

Gatchalian said House Bill (HB) No. 5575, or the proposed “Anti-Identity Theft Act of 2017,” aims to criminalize identity theft and identity fraud.

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The proposed bill also seeks to impose a minimum imprisonment of six months to a maximum of six years and a fine of not less than twice the damage the crime caused to victims.

“With the advent of a digital age, more and more of our transactions are done in cyberspace, as such most of our personal information are uploaded in the cloud. It has therefore become increasingly easy for men with criminal designs to use our information to appropriate to themselves our identity,” Gatchalian said.

Gatchalian said while the Data Privacy Act already protected data against unlawful access and use, “there is still a gap in our laws as we have yet to specifically penalize the act of a person who misrepresents himself to be another person to that person’s detriment.”

“That is what this bill seeks to penalize,” he said.

In his explanatory note to HB No. 5575, Gatchalian cited as example the use of personal data to make troll accounts on social media to attack a person’s identity.

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