Moscow police have opened a criminal case on the use of malicious computer programs due to the mass leak of personal data of Moscow residents who have recovered from the coronavirus infection.

The head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Alexander Khinshtein, reported on the initiation of a criminal case. In December, he contacted the Prosecutor General's Office, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Roskomnadzor over the data leak. Khinshtein has now received a response from the head of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Moscow, Oleg Baranov.

According to Khinshtein, the police are now looking for those responsible.

In early December 2020, it became known that links to Telegram chats of Moscow hospitals and ambulance stations, as well as Google tables with information about Muscovites who had recovered from COVID-19, had appeared on the Internet. According to the publication Readovka, they contained data on 300,000 people, including first and last names, residential addresses, mobile phone numbers, and health information.
Moscow City Hall confirmed the leak of personal data. The head of the Moscow Department of Information Technology, Eduard Lysenko, said that it happened due to human error. According to him, the employees who were processing official documents "allowed these files to be transferred to third parties."

Police open criminal case after mass leak of data of Muscovites who recovered from COVID-19