French President Emmanuel Macron’s Covid vaccination certificate has been shared en masse on social networks since Tuesday.
On Twitter and Snapchat, users called for the code to be used as a health passport, which is currently required to visit restaurants, bars and museums or to take the long-distance train, for example.
Said QR code with details of Macron’s name and date of birth as well as his vaccination information landed on the network due to “negligence or malevolence”, confirmed the Elysée Palace in Paris on Tuesday and blames employees in the health system for it.
Accidentally or on purpose?
According to the Élysée, health workers in France have access to a centralized system with corona vaccination certificates. Macron’s QR code was accidentally or deliberately circulated from among these staff.
Several French media such as the newspaper Le Figaro or Liberation report that they checked Macron’s QR code for authenticity and scanned it into the French Corona app “TousAntiCovid”.
Born on December 21, 1977
Emmanuel Macron’s personal information actually appeared on the screen: born December 21, 1977 and vaccinated with a dose of Pfizer last July. The head of state had already received the vaccine at the end of May, but a technical error had postponed the vaccination date in the vaccine registers.
A similar incident had already occurred a few days earlier with the QR code of Prime Minister Castex and raised questions about data security.
In the case of Jean Castex, the source was quickly identified. It was a photo taken by a press agency showing Castex checking his health passport and being “recycled” by hackers.
“We know that the idea circulated in groups of yellow vests”
At Macron, everything indicates that an unknown person willfully forwarded the QR code, suspects LREM MP Eric Bothorel.
In other words, someone who was supposed to scan Emmanuel Macron’s QR code for verification, but instead saved the president’s health record on their own phone and then passed it on. “We know that the idea was circulating in groups of yellow vests,” Bothorel told the CheckNews website.
It was initially unclear whether Macron had received a new code. Experts assumed that the leaked QR code that was circulating on the Internet would be put on a “black list” in the TousAntiCovid app.
Some also found something funny about the data leak:
In any case, the use of a falsified QR code is prohibited, as is the passing on of your own or someone else’s code.
The use of someone else’s code will result in a fine of € 135. If this happens again, this can lead to a prison sentence of up to six months.
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