On silly websites, and St. Patrick’s Day

Today I was listening to what is becoming my new favourite radio station, BFM 89.9, and I heard the Marketing Manager for Guinness (well, GAB Sdn Bhd) talking about a range of topics, from the sin tax on alcohol (2nd highest in the world, following Norway!) to what a big deal St. Patrick’s Day in Malaysia is (must be — GAB disgustingly pays bloggers to write about it). If you care to listen, BFM is all modern with the relevant blog/podcast. Two things come to mind.

St. Patrick’s Day Drunk Dial
Check out the St. Patrick’s Day Drunk Dial. Call the number anywhere between March 13 and 23, to win a prize even, for the best entry ;)

Why do I even mention the site? Because my colleague Dups, is one of the guys behind this. Check out his journal entries on this.

Guinness has a stupid website


I won’t link to what I consider silly, but Guinness Malaysia needs to think twice about their website.

One should think its sufficient to enter based on clicking “Yes, I am a non-Muslim aged 21 years and above”, but asking for the I.C. number? The I.C. being the Malaysian Identity Card is not something one should give away lightly. How do you know if the number isn’t cached? Isn’t stolen and used for other devious purposes?

I wonder how many people check out the site and freely give away their I.C. numbers. Probably far too many, that don’t know much about identity theft.


  1. Marvin Lee says:

    I thought so too, for the IC number field, try put in any NRIC compatible number starting with 88 and less, then you’re through. Try 880101-08-8888.
    I would’ve thought the YES checkbox and ENTER button would’ve been sufficient, but then again I’m not a UI designer. :-P

  2. Danny Foo says:

    True enough. Looks more like they’re doing data mining. Though I’d say the data mined is only 50% accurate. LOL!

  3. zibin says:

    The data mined is very unreliable, how do they ID check?Link to immigressen? No way right.

    And it’s non sensical to ask for IC. You can probably type anything and tell em ur from out of town.