ATHENS, Greece – Greece's Finance Ministry has been fined 150,000 euros ($200,000) by the country's privacy watchdog for allegedly failing to protect data on millions of taxpayers that ended up in the possession of private companies.
The Data Protection Authority said Friday the ministry hadn't taken sufficient steps to protect its databases from unauthorized access.
That led to a "particularly large" breach of personal data, the authority said in a statement, and gave the ministry two months to improve security.
Last year, police arrested a man on suspicion of having stolen 9 million personal data files from the ministry, in what is believed to be Greece's biggest breach of private information.
And in January, police charged three men after tax data for millions of Greeks were found in an Athens company's offices.
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