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The “Appeals.by” service for submitting complaints to government agencies has stopped working following a report of a data leak, Zerkalo reports.
This morning, Belarus’s Ministry of Communications and Informatization announced that access to the system had been temporarily restricted “due to technical maintenance.”
“Please note that access to the appeals system (appeals.by) is temporarily restricted due to technical maintenance. Further information will be provided once the scheduled maintenance is complete and full access to the system has been restored,” the ministry said.
The reasons for the maintenance have not been specified.
The “Appeals.by” system is an official centralised online portal that allows users to submit applications, proposals or complaints to any government agency in Belarus and track their progress.
On the evening of October 9, Zerkalo discovered that data labelled “appeals.by users” had appeared on a popular service used to look up personal information. The outlet’s investigation found that a bot had begun displaying actual appeals submitted to government agencies through the online platform.
More than 413,000 individuals and 19,000 government agencies and organisations are registered with the “Appeals.by” service.
Under the rules, if a personal data breach occurs, the data operator must notify the National Centre for Personal Data Protection. However, Zerkalo notes that no notification of a breach involving “Appeals.by” had been received.