The survey, which was sent electronically to beneficiaries of Luxembourg’s contact tracing services, contained fields that were filled with data from other respondents.

According to our sister publication Paperjam, that broke the story, in addition to gender and age, it was possible to view anecdotal responses and there was no limit on the number of times a person could complete the survey.

Responding to a parliamentary question on Wednesday, health minister Paulette Lenert (LSAP) wrote that “when the form was translated into different languages, a problem arose which resulted in a person being able to see the answers to the questions entered by the person who had previously completed the form."

“As soon as the health directorate was informed of this incident, the form was deactivated. It will not be put back into service until the problem has been corrected. Finally, it should be noted that such processing does not presuppose prior consultation of the National Commission for Data Protection, particularly with regard to the voluntary nature of participation in the survey, as well as the anonymous nature of the answers. In fact, at no time is the respondent asked to identify himself or herself and the questions asked are general in scope.”