The Department of Information and Communications Technology is drafting policies allowing consumers to digitally share only select personal information for more robust data protection.

“In our deployment of the national digital ID, we’ll be adopting a self-sovereign data policy, where you as a data owner will be the one in control of how much data you are willing to share with e-wallets, government agencies,” DICT Secretary Ivan Uy said last Thursday.

Uy said this measure would further prevent incidents of cybercrimes in the country, encouraging data owners to think twice before sharing their information.

“Agencies and systems cannot access your data digitally without your consent.”

According to the Philippine Statistics Authority, over 60 million adult Filipinos out of 72 million now have a national ID.

Holders can easily accomplish transactions with government and private agencies through this single ID requirement, available in physical and digital forms.

A survey by data analytics firm Fico released at least 5 million Filipinos experienced identity theft last year. Many of them believed criminals did it to open others’ financial accounts.

Fang Yu, a co-founder of cybersecurity firm DataVisor, said identity theft could also be used to apply for credit cards, loans, social security, medical benefits and driver’s licenses.

“With your name alone, a bad actor can start scraping the Internet to create a fictitious persona. He can build a person’s profile, someone else’s date of birth, some other criteria to create a persona than to conduct a bad act,” Steven Scheurmann, Palo Alto Cybersecurity’s vice president for ASEAN, had told the Daily Tribune.