KUALA LUMPUR, Jan. 24 (Xinhua) -- Personal details of more than 220,000 organ donors and their next-of-kin have been leaked online, a Malaysian website reported on Tuesday night, becoming the latest data breach in the Southeast Asian country.
According to the report from local technology site Lowyat.net, the leaked data not only included organ donor's names, ID numbers, phone numbers and addresses, but also contained the personal information of the donors' next-of-kin. The leaked data were divided into files by year of donor's sign-up time, from 1997 until 2016.
The report reckoned that the data, which got leaked as early as September 2016, was retrieved from a central database, most likely from government hospitals and National Transplant Resource Centers across the country.
It said the leaked data were part of a bigger data breach which took place between September and November 2016 and involved multiple organizations.
Malaysia's Department of Personal Data Protection said on Wednesday that they took seriously the leakage and an investigation is underway.
Before this incident, Lowyat.net reported in October last year that roughly 46.2 million mobile phone numbers as well as the subscribers' names and addresses from Malaysia's telecommunication companies were leaked. The site claimed that someone tried to sell the data on the website.
It is feared that such leaked data could be used for theft and forgery, though no report related to the leakage has emerged.
The Malaysian police investigating the phone number leak said they followed the lead to an IP address in Oman, but found no further information since.
