AfD-Datenleck: Behörden räumen Fehler beim Umgang mit Wählerdaten ein

In the wake of a data breach, several authorities have acknowledged errors in handling voter information. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the Stralendorf office confirmed to the Handelsblatt that they unknowingly sent complete birthdates via email to the AfD's regional association. This transmission of birthdates was deemed a "falschlicherweise" and constituted a data protection violation.

The authorities reported the incident to the data protection supervisory authority and informed affected individuals in writing. It was revealed that eight administrative districts in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern had sent around 5,480 data sets containing personal information of young eligible voters to the AfD. Seven of these eight districts sent the data without additional password protection.

The information later became part of a large data leak published by the federal party in mid-October, disclosing over 420,000 emails. The AfD confirmed a hacker attack on a service provider in September. The regional association also confirmed a data breach, resulting in the public exposure of personal and confidential information of citizens whose data was transmitted by administrative bodies to the AfD for election campaigning.