LAHORE: Nurses in the Punjab province have been receiving calls to blackmail and threaten them after their personal data got leaked, ARY NEWS reported citing a handout issued on Wednesday.
According to details, unknown callers have been blackmailing nurses in the province besides also calling some of them and demanding money to resolve issues faced by them after their personal data got leaked.
The healthcare department in the province has asked female paramedics to avoid responding to such calls. They were further directed to register a complaint with the concerned helpline of the health department.
The data leak has become a prime issue not only in Pakistan but globally as hackers use it as a bargaining chip to gain monetary or other benefits.
In December last year, U.S. drugmaker Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech said that documents related to their development of a COVID-19 vaccine had been “unlawfully accessed” in a cyberattack on Europe’s medicines regulator.
Read More: Healthcare data hacking could lead to identity thefts
The European Medicines Agency (EMA), responsible for assessing and approving medicines and vaccines for the European Union, said hours earlier it had been targeted in a cyberattack. It gave no further details.
Pfizer and BioNTech said they did not believe any personal data of trial participants had been compromised and EMA “has assured us that the cyber attack will have no impact on the timeline for its review.”
