Minister Yıldırım: We Knew ID Information were Stolen

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Minister of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communication, Binali Yıldırım has issued statement as to stealing of ID intormation of about 50 million citizens of Turkey: “We already knew it, it’s not new to us”.

Yesterday the reports that ID information of 46,611,709 citizens of Republic of Turkey have been stolen by hackers took place in media. The AP announced the incident as “The biggest public leak to date”.

The minister: It is old news

Minister Yıldırım made a statement following the leak came to light:

“It is an old news”, stating Yıldırım confirmed the leak by saying “We already knew it, it is an incident that occurred in the past”.

“This is a very old news. Such an allegation was put forward in 2010 too. This news is being presented as something new. The reports coming out now don’t have an actual value. This is a matter we know, an incident that occurred in the past”.

The data in subject consist of ID number, name, surname, mother name, father name, sex, date of birth, city of birth, place of register, and full address.

It was claimed that the database included information of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, and former President Abdullah Gül.

About the shared information

According to the report of Hürriyet daily,

- It involves people who turn 18 in 2008. For this reason, information of the citizens born before 1990 are available.

- A test database had been built for local elections in March 2008, and this database had been leaked. The ID information had been sold in DVDs in 2010, and that police had captured the person selling the data. However, the information kept on being shared.

- It is impossible to delete the data since they have been already shared. With the ID information, some banking transactions can be made, fake IDs can be produced. Thus, it is crime to download this database that includes personal information. (EA/TK)

* We made use of BBC Türkçe, Hürriyet, and AA in this article.