Over 600 people take legal action against company on data breach

An application has been filed before the Civil Courts against C-Planet IT Solutions Ltd for breaching data protection laws after a leak of some names, addresses and ID card details of more than 330,000 Maltese citizens revealed last April.

The application is signed by 620 claimants following an initiative by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Foundation and NGO Repubblika.

The application requests the Court to quantify and award the damages that the claimants have suffered as a result of the breach of their personal data, in accordance with the provisions of Regulation 2018/679 (‘GDPR’).

The leak held a voter database that was in possession of C-Planet IT Solutions. The leak contained personal information such as names, addresses and ID card details of more than 330,000 Maltese citizens – some 75% of Malta’s population.

The company in question is owned by Philip Farrugia, a former production director at the Labour Party media, One Productions. He is also the brother-in-law of Parliamentary Secretary for EU funds Stefan Zrinzo Azzopardi.

Besides basic information, the data which was leaked also held a section identifying the individuals as either Labour or Nationalist voters. The monitoring service that revealed the leak said the data was available for everyone to access without the need for a password or identification.

Following the revelations of the huge data breach, the company brushed off the seriousness of the leak as a ‘mishap’. It also said it would not be replying to any questions on the issue because the information in question was ‘old’.

Lawyers Antonio Ghio, Carl Grech, Deo Falzon, Sarah Cannataci and Michael Zammit Maempel signed the application.