Fake news on Rockwills

I was jolted out of bed three days ago when I saw this image appearing in one of my social media chatgroups. Huh? I thought to myself. What's happening there? This image was supposedly a page from The Edge newspaper's CEO Morning Brief. It looked quite legitimate. No doubt, people looking at it would believe that it was real. 

Except, it wasn't. Someone had created a fake image to make it look like a real exposé by The Edge. Obviously, this is someone or some organisation with malicious intent. Business rivalry? Jealousy? Unhappiness with the leading estate planning company in the country? Diversion of attention? Who knows? But this someone did not stop with just The Edge. He had created similar fake images to fool people that Sin Chew Daily, China Press and Utusan Malaysia had published similar content too. 

Fortunately, the ploy to discredit the Rockwills Group was seen through rather quickly because it was quickly pointed out that the CEO Morning Brief is never printed on a Monday. And yet this one was dated as "MONDAY, JUNE 13, 2022".

What happened next was the Rockwills Group quickly released a Press Statement to deny the allegations in the fake story. Rockwills also reported the fake news to the Police and MCMC urging them for a quick investigation and bring the culprits to book. At the same time as all these were taking place, The Edge, Sin Chew Daily and China Press announced in their respective media that the images that carried their mastheads were fake. 

On their facebook page, Rockwills posted these messages:

Recent news about Rockwills selling clients' data on various publications is not true. We have reported to police and MCMC, and relevant media has confirmed their name and corporate logo have been misused by a third party in spreading the FAKE news.

Rockwills would like to reiterate that it subscribes fully to the Personal Data Protection Act 2010 and has invested heavily in protecting the sensitive personal information of its customers. This remains and continues to be our top priority.

近期，有些报道关于乐委集团出售客户数据的文章属于不实与假新闻。我们已向警方和马来西亚通讯及多媒体委员会（MCMC）举报此事件。同时，相关媒体已确认其名称和公司标识已被第三方恶意滥用以传播假新闻。

乐委集团在此声明，我们一向以来完全遵守 2010 年《个人数据保护法》，并已注下重资以确保每个客户们的个人隐私资料受到严善的保障，并为此持续看待为主要优先事项。

The denials by The Edge, Sin Chew Daily and China Press that they had ever printed such stories have since appeared here (The Edge), here (Sin Chew Daily) and here (China Press). For good measure, I'd also like to present two videos that Rockwills had prepared in the last few days to address this matter: