More than 500,000 searches for individuals were made on the Bizfile portal during the five-day period from Dec 9 to 13 when full NRIC numbers were made available.

This is much higher than the usual daily traffic of 2,000 to 3,000 queries made through the portal’s free People Search function, said Second Minister for Finance Indranee Rajah in Parliament on Jan 8, citing investigations thus far.