Energy watchdog discloses big customer data leak

The data of about 10,000 people who own a renewable energy installation was made public unknowingly by Luxembourg’s energy watchdog, the Institut Luxembourgeois de Régulation (ILR) said.

The name, the address of their installation and the characteristics of their energy unit were “temporarily publicly available on the test platform Open Data whose website was only known to informed people,” the watchdog said in a letter sent to affected individuals Monday.

The leak was not caused by external foul play or a hack but rather was an “internal manipulation mistake” that made a working paper containing the data public, said the letter seen by the Luxembourg Times.

When the leak was detected, the working paper was deleted and the energy watchdog informed the national data protection commission.

No credit card details or other personal data were public, ILR Director Luc Tapella told public radio broadcaster 100.7which first reported on the leak Tuesday evening.

The data was in the public domain between the end of October last year until the end of July, he said.

Only people who knew about the existence of the test platform could have seen the information, Tapella told 100.7.

The ILR confirmed the 100.7 report to the Luxembourg Times in an email.