Munich administration admits data breach in election candidate lists
Friday 9th October 2026 on 18:31 in
Bavaria
Munich’s Kreisverwaltungsreferat, the city’s public administration department, has admitted that private addresses of candidates for the Migration Advisory Council were published online by mistake, BR reported. The information appeared on a municipal website on Wednesday afternoon and remained online for about three hours before being removed. The department did not say how many candidates were affected.
The data was included in the publication of approved candidate lists. The department said the error resulted from an outdated template that had not been updated to reflect a 2022 legal change banning the publication of private addresses. The correct template was used for the previous election in 2023, but the old version was mistakenly saved for future use.
The incident was reported to both the city’s data protection officer and Bavaria’s state data protection officer. The department apologised to the candidates in writing the following day and said it would improve internal procedures to better protect personal data. City council groups had also been informed.
The council group Die Linke sharply criticised the breach, saying politically active people with a migration background faced a particular risk of being attacked. It said many candidates had been politically active in their countries of origin and had in some cases been persecuted. Munich city councillor Arif Haidary called the publication of their home addresses an “absolute nightmare.” Group leader Stefan Jagel also linked the incident to a hiring freeze at the city administration, which he said had caused understaffing and excessive workloads.
The Migration Advisory Council is generally elected every six years and represents the political interests of Munich residents without German citizenship on a voluntary basis. It also advises the city council and administration on issues affecting the foreign population and works for equal legal, social and cultural treatment of German and non-German residents.