Personal Data of Local Telecom Users Leaked

The personal information of users of local telecommunications service provider Silknet was possibly illegally accessed and disclosed, Silknet itself reports, although it maintains that there was no illegal dissemination of subscriber calls, messages and other telecommunications service information.

Although Silknet says the incident “probably” affected around 2,000 users, a day earlier, RFE/RL‘s Georgian service reported that the personal data of significantly more, about 33,000 users, specifically copies of their ID cards, had been breached at Silknet and illegally leaked over the Internet. RFE/RL reported that the incident took place on March 18.

According to RFE/RL, following an appeal from a user, the Personal Data Protection Service of Georgia has already begun investigating the matter in two directions: first, the extent to which security measures for the protection of personal data were observed at Silknet, and second, whether the company fulfilled its obligation to notify the agency of the incident.

RFE/RL asked Lado Svanadze, the founder of the Internet Development Initiative, a local NGO that works on Internet-related issues, to comment on the matter. He explained that according to the law on information security, to which Georgia introduced changes in 2021, companies and organizations are divided into categories. Silknet, along with other telecommunications companies, is in the second category, which means that in terms of information security, the company is supervised by the State Security Service in addition to the personal data protection inspector. “Therefore, if an investigation is launched, the SSSG should also be involved in it,” Svanadze told RFE/RL.

For its part, Silknet says in its statement that it is “closely cooperating” with the Operative-Technical Agency of the SSSG, which is the cybersecurity regulator designated by the Georgian Law on Information Security, on the matter, although it does not say that it is officially investigating the matter with the SSSG agency.

The company is “taking the necessary measures with it [Operative-Technical Agency] to eliminate, investigate and prevent this incident for the future,” Silknet says.

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