ATHENS – Greece’s Health Ministry is in apparent violation of new European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) guidelines with a report that the personal data of millions of patients at hospitals could be at risk.

State officials told Kathimerini the system transferring patients’ personal data to the ministry to create electronic medical files is not encrypted and doesn’t guarantee confidentiality, which could allow the information to be breached by hackers.

The GDPR was introduced this year so that some 250 million people across the EU can better monitor their online personal data and extends already tough privacy laws designed to let people prevent others from having information about them.

Greece’s problem apparently was created because the current data transfer system was designed on the basis of previous confidentiality legislation and not on GDPR.