A scandal broke out in Croatia after it was discovered that data on more than a million motor vehicle owners had been leaked to the public without authorization.
The index reports that N1 received a clarification from the Croatian Security Operations Agency (SOA), from which they explained that the leakage of data on vehicles and vehicle owners in Croatia did not occur through hacking, but because a person who had access to that data made an unauthorized copy and published it. For the record, this is about 2.4 million vehicle records and 1.1 million natural persons. Among the unauthorized published data are names, addresses, tax numbers, JMBGs, dates of birth, registrations and other data about vehicles and their insurance policies.
“Given that these are allegations of criminal offenses, the SOA reported the same to the State Attorney’s Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs – Police Directorate, as well as the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data due to a possible violation of personal data protection. “In order to carry out further investigative actions, we cannot provide more information about this case, and the SOA is at the disposal of the competent authorities with its capabilities”, according to the SOA.
The Vehicle Center of Croatia, through which cars are registered in Croatia, told N1 that the records of registered and marked vehicles are kept by the Ministry of the Interior, in accordance with the Law on Road Traffic Safety.
“Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Davor Božinović said that intensive investigations are ongoing into how data on vehicles and their owners were leaked, stressing that these data were not leaked from the MUP, and that they are not in public space. Božinović in a statement to journalists, he stated that the Ministry of Internal Affairs launched intensive investigations on Thursday afternoon, when the SOA informed him that these were most likely criminal offenses related to the disposal of certain data, and that the investigations were also being carried out by the Agency for the Protection of Personal Data (AZOP),” writes Index.
The Agency for the Protection of Personal Data also announced the leak. They confirmed that there was a data leak.
“The Agency for the Protection of Personal Data has received information that the personal data of more than one million natural persons who own the vehicle have been leaked. We inform the public that the supervisory procedure over all relevant subjects in the specific case is ongoing and all the circumstances are being determined, as well as the actual manager of the processing of the database in which the subject personal data is contained. We will inform the public regularly about all further relevant information,” AZOP reported, Indeks reports.
