One of the easiest way that can lead to identity theft is through your Identification Card (IC) or MyCard. Have you submitted your IC photocopy to any party without crossing it before? If yes, please add a cross to your IC photocopy from now on to avoid any unnecessary trouble!

Here’s How To Cross Your IC Photocopy

Crossing your IC photocopy is easy. All you have to do is draw two lines on the top and left side of the photocopy.

Then, add the purpose of submission in between the two lines. For example, “FOR XXXX APPLICATION ONLY” or “FOR XXXX”.

You can either do it manually with a pen or digitally with a photo or document editing tool. 

Why Should You Cross Your IC Photocopy?

If you ask what’s the point of crossing it if your details are shown anyway? It is to prevent the ‘thieves’ for simply having a complete copy of your IC.

Many Malaysians are not aware of the threat it could pose by not doing so. When someone has the copy of your IC, they can immediately use it for many purposes under your name. For instance, loan money. The consequence is costly! 

Sin Chew Daily reported that a man was slapped with more than RM100,000 debt after his IC was misused by someone else. He explained that he lost his IC once in 2015 in a mall. However, he did not lodge a police report because an anonymous delivered it back to him 3 days later.

Unfortunately, six years later in 2021, he discovered that someone has been using his name to pay bills with a photocopy of his IC. Now, he has a huge amount of debt to pay and couldn’t get a loan because he was blacklisted by banks.

It seems that with just a copy of your IC, things could go wrong very silently. His incident gives you an idea of how important it is to protect your IC and the photocopy of it that has no markup.

Moreover, there are many incidents regarding the misuse of IC photocopy happening over the years. 

The National Registration Department of Malaysia has even shared a post to remind Malaysians to always add a cross on documents.

Don’t give irresponsible people a chance to ‘hurt’ you, prevention is better than ‘cure’!