site.btaMinisters of Justice, e-Government Deny Personal Data Leak in Bulstat Register

January 8 (BTA) - At a briefing at the Justice Ministry on Saturday, Ministers Bozhidar Bozhanov of e-Government and Nadezhda Yordanova of Justice said no personal data had been leaked in the Bulstat register. The register is currently showing the permanent addresses of self-insured persons, which complies with the law in effect since 2005, the Justice Minister specified.

She added that a legislative amendment is being drafted to change this practice, as an analysis has shown it is not good to make such data public.

Bozhanov said that from both a legal and a technical point of view, there has not been a data leak. There is no risk for such a leak, because the system works in compliance with the law and with good information security practices, he noted.

On Friday, Bulgarian National Radio reported that the data of over 300,000 people, including their personal identification number (EGN), permanent address, email address and phone number, are visible in the Bulstat register. Affected are mostly self-insured persons, such as lawyers, designers, architects, accountants, and journalists. This comes as a result of the transformation of natural persons' Bulstat codes that coincide with their EGN into a 9-digit single identification code, as required by the EU's General Data Protection Regulation to better protect personal data.

Taking a question, Minister Bozhanov said the so-called leaked data has been in the Bulstat register for 15 years, but many people discovered that just now, because they checked their profile in the register to see their new single identification code.

/DS/