Leaked data can create such kind of risks

The personal information, including full names, phone numbers, email addresses, and National Identification (NID) numbers of citizens, have been exposed from a Bangladesh government website.

Initially, it is being said that the personal information of several lakh of citizens has been leaked.

However, Dr. Mohammad Ershadul Karim, Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Malaya, Malaysia, said indirectly that data of about 5 lakh citizens of Bangladesh have been exposed.

In an interview regarding the data leak, he said three billion Yahoo accounts were affected by an attack in 2013. In 2018, 110 crore Indian Aadhaar card data and in 2017 US 198 million voter information were leaked from government agencies. In 2017, the phone numbers of 4.6 million people were leaked in Malaysia, which caused huge chaos. In this case, if the information of 5 crore people of Bangladesh is leaked, that will be one of the biggest issues in this regard.

Discussion is underway everywhere after the US-based online news outlet TechCrunch published a report on this issue. Cyber security experts fear that the personal privacy of citizens and various types of cybercrimes may increase following this incident.

Already, the government's Computer Incident Response Team (BGD e-GOV CIRT) has launched an investigation to probe the matter.

CIRT team has launched a detailed investigation into the incident to understand the extent and impact of the data leaks, the agency said in a press release.

Cyber security experts said that both individuals and organizations are at risk due to this data leak. In the language of technology, it is called 'identity theft'. That means anyone else can commit various crimes using anyone’s name with personal information.

The risk factors include- banking transactions, online shopping, credit card fraud activities, blackmailing, and others.