Vietnam government accidentally posts all foreigners personal information

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You know how people love being doxxed? Yeah, me neither. Recently everyone in the city was ordered to get covid-19 testing and while there are some conspiracy theories floating around about how they aren't actually testing for Covid and they are harvesting DNA and what not... I'm afraid that is something I am not willing to get on board with. I agree that government is normally more of a hindrance than a help, but DNA harvesting? Maybe I just don't understand what is being said here but that sounds nuts to me.

Anyway, over the past several days the 2200 foreigners that reside in Da Nang had to go and get tested for Covid by giving blood and doing the swab test.


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The process of getting tested wasn't very time-consuming but since everyone seemed to turn up at the same time it did take a while to be seen.

They also are not singling out the foreigners in this, which is something funny that is happening in the locals Facebook page but if you have ever had the misfortune of being part of a "locals" page on Facebook, you probably already know that half of the people in these groups have the IQ of a snapping turtle. The entire city is being tested before they re-open the city and at the moment we are still under a form of lockdown that is more annoying than anything else.

It seems like overkill to me to test the entire population because a few new cases arrive, almost all of which were spread at a hospital anyway. Pursuing the zero infection until a vaccine is available seems absurd to me, not to mention that it is completely unsustainable since while I do not know how much it costs to test 1 million people for Covid, it certainly costs more than zero.

Anyway, I complied with the testing because I do not wish to have my visa situation here compromised by making a problem. They probably wouldn't deport someone for refusing to comply especially since there really isn't any repatriation flights right now anyway, but since I do quite enjoy living here, I'm not going to kick up a fuss over getting a test done for free. If anyone out there can explain this DNA harvesting thing to me, i would be interested in hearing it but in the meantime even if they are doing that, I am not going to risk ending up on a communist list by refusing to do the test. I'm sure there will be a few that do refuse but I can't really understand the motivation for doing so.


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I don't know if the government did it on purpose or if they are a bit moronic (they are the government afterall, so the 2nd thing is likely) but they made all 2200 foreign resident's personal information including name, address, date of birth, country of origin, and passport number available for everyone to look at online. Initially this was delivered to only property owners (which would still be a massive privacy violation,) but it quickly made its way to the general internet and the dropbox link is still up at the time of me writing this.

Thankfully, there are a lot of typos in the list and my name is spelled wrong and one of my friends said they got the birthday date/month/year mixed up on his. However, this is still a massive privacy violation and I am sure that there are some scammers our there that have already started to use this information for bad intentions such as identity theft.

Mostly, I have felt like the government here actually functions pretty well and it was kind of changing my impression about what communism actually is since my only exposure to it prior to this was films and exaggerated news stories.

I really don't think that the government had any sort of evil intention when they did this, but it is an exceptionally stupid move.



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15 comments
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When I visited a few years ago, I never felt like I was in a communist country....
But there were a lot of red flags! :)

I cannot wait till this is over and I can go back. Best place I have ever visited.

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It definitely seems like that would be some sort of civil rights violation. At least over here anyway. People would be suing out right and left. If my works was like hey, you need to get tested to keep working here, then I would probably do so. For the government to mandate that and the blood work as well, that is pretty crazy. I don't like getting blood work done anyway, let alone in a situation like this!

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the process was rather painless and while i'm not entirely sure about this i don't think you have a whole lot of room to complain when you are a guest in that country. It's fine with me and i tend to jump on conspiracy theory bandwagons... i just don't understand how this could possibly considered a bad thing... well, the testing i mean, not the accidental publishing of our private information.

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Yeah, I guess so. Especially when over here there are people that need to get tested but they can't. I really respect your attitude about the whole thing.

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(Edited)

No one really knows what's going on. There are many suspicions about this crazy corona virus. I feel like the world is overreacting to what is a very mild virus... and that's not just my own opinion. The most important virologist in my country says the same... and she has won various international prizes for her investigative works, besides being the top director of a Molecular Medicine Institute.

Source: https://expresso.pt/coronavirus/2020-04-19-Maria-Manuel-Mota-cientista-Este-e-um-virus-relativamente-bonzinho

Meanwhile... the governments all over the world have proven, time and time again, that they cannot be trusted. 🤔

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I completely agree with you, mate: "overreaction" is a good synthesis! !BEER and a huge hug! 🤗

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Oh man that is huge! Maybe localized but still a giant breach.

I suppose it still all comes down to one stupid move from one person and this info is out there for sale (for free this time) for the companies stealing people's identity.

Once something makes it onto the internet, everyone has access to it. Not that it is that tough for people to collect and correlate that information but the passport number being right there spells easy identity theft for all of those people.

Do they make reparations or just claim 'my bad'?

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There are probably some economic incentives for the testing mandated there, as exists in other locales around the globe. Whoever released the personal data collected certainly put a damper on it's monetary value, for such information can be parlayed into a small fortune when sold to eager buyers.

DNA harvesting/sampling, etc...??? Quite possible and probable. That particular type of data storage/sharing has been going on for many years now.

In any case @gooddream...I'm happy to hear you're enjoying life in Viet Nam and hope it continues that way for you and the little furry member of your family.

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The more accurate term is DNA profiling. They will keep all your information in a database. In the event of any crime, they just need to run through the database.

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are you serious? I hadn't heard this. I guess my name is on that list as well.

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dead serious man, and there is nothing you or me or anyone else can do about it because it is already done. It was widely available even on FB at one point.

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That is breaching of privacy! That is hell of a stupid move which may bring hazardous results of vivid kinds of thefts.

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The government didn't do well by revealing the details of foreigners in their country, they should have done a general testing of both citizens and foreigners. You did well in comporting yourself through this period

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We can expect such privacy breaches from government.

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