Over the last two weeks, Albania has been rocked by a data privacy scandal.
It was discovered that the persona data of more than 910,000 citizens was harnessed, allegedly from the Civil Registry, and then given to the Socialist Party for electoral purposes. This data, in Access format, was then leaked to Lapsi.al who blew the whistle and published some excerpts of the data.
Meanwhile, a link to the Access data was circulated widely among the public.
The data included name, fathers name, mobile number, ID card, voting area, place of work, and observations made by a Patron- a Socialist Party appointed ‘spy’ assigned to observe, monitor, and report back on an individual, in particular with reference to their political affiliations.
A number of foreign residents have raised concerns that their data may be included in the leak. While Exit is not in possession of the data due to ethical concerns, we have had the data checked for a selection of foreign residents’ names.
It appears that there is no data held on foreign nationals living in Albania in this particular data set that has been leaked to the public.
