How do politicians use the personal data of Ukrainians? Questions for Poroshenko and Tymoshenko

Some politicians still use trackers from the Russian service Yandex on their own websites...

Political parties collect and store huge amounts of personal data of Ukrainians - party members or supporters, participants in trainings and youth wings, donors and others. This happens both by filling out questionnaires or forms, and simply thanks to specialized trackers on the websites of parties and candidates.

In addition, public organizations or charitable foundations affiliated with politicians actively collect data. The situation is complicated by the war: a large number of vulnerable groups of the population seek help, which can only be obtained by providing personal information. This is due to security requirements, but creates the risk of data leaks if not properly protected.

Among the parliamentary parties, only Servant of the People and Golos published on their websites policies for the collection and processing of personal data, as well as a consent form for this. Some politicians still use trackers from the Russian service Yandex on their own websites.

The “Honestly” movement investigated how parliamentary parties, parliamentary groups, politicians and organizations affiliated with them collect personal data of Ukrainians.

Parliamentary parties

All parliamentary parties have their own websites. In addition to being a platform for political forces to communicate with Ukrainians, the sites perform another function: they facilitate interaction between the party and its supporters - allowing them to collect contributions, register for events, or even join the party.

All this is accompanied by the collection of personal data. Citizens of Ukraine must separately consent to this. However, only two parties ask him - “Servant of the People” and “Voice”.

At the same time, “European Solidarity” and “Batkivshchyna” do not even have policies that would explain how they work with personal information and how they protect it. These politicians should be public, but they could not be found on party websites.

However, even existing policies may be incomplete. For example, the “Voices” website uses an Alphabet tracker, but this is not indicated anywhere. Separately, it is worth mentioning financial contributions. “Golos” is one of the very few parties that has a built-in payment system.

In the public offer, the party warns about the collection of personal data. However, political forces do not report the transfer of personal information of donors to bank operators.

Not all party websites have registration forms that ask for personal data of Ukrainians. “European Solidarity,” for example, does not collect information this way. However, the site uses trackers, which the party does not warn users about. It is also not stated anywhere how the collected data is used.

In this case, Petro Poroshenko’s charitable foundation and the public organization “Solidarity of Communities” deserve special attention. They are actively working with the EU party, which even transferred state funding to the activities of this NGO.

“On the Right of the Community” has application forms on its website where you need to provide personal information and contacts. However, the organization does not offer either a consent form or a privacy policy. The policy is published only on the online store page of this PO.

Also, the website of the Petro Poroshenko Foundation did not have a policy on working with data, although it offered to fill out a form for requests. Now this site is no longer working. The specifics of the work of these two organizations are related to sensitive data - they provide assistance to the military. Therefore, the security requirements for such information are much higher, including for the person to whom this data is transferred.

The Batkivshchyna party also does not have a privacy policy, but suggests leaving personal data in several places at once. Thus, the website has forms for volunteering, joining the party and subscribing to the email newsletter. For the latter, a third-party service is also used.

The party also has separate pages for special projects, for example against the open land market. You can support these campaigns on the website - for this, the party requests contact information. What happens to them next is unknown.

“Servant of the People” takes the most responsible approach to working with personal data. She also actively uses registration forms, and not only through the site’s functionality.

The party uses both Google forms and Telegram bots. In both cases, the user is warned about the collection of personal data and, in fact, asked for consent. It is worth noting that Telegram bots are independent of the platform itself, as stated in its rules, therefore, they do not transmit additional information to the company.

The “Honestly” movement spoke on condition of anonymity with representatives of all four of these parties. It turned out that all political forces maintain registers of their members and have databases of supporters, volunteers and voters. However, this is often organized quite chaotically.

For example, it is common practice for individuals to borrow this data between party cells or even between different parties or affiliated organizations. They also do not neglect the sale and purchase of registers of personal data of Ukrainians for further political work.

Why is it important?

In Ukraine, the law on personal data has been in force for more than ten years. As of 2024, it is somewhat outdated and requires changes. For example, the law does not clearly define what may be considered personal data. This usually includes information that can be used to identify a person.

In general, the norms of the current legislation are far from European ones. However, even these basic requirements are ignored. The “Honestly” movement analyzed 21 websites of politicians, parties and related organizations - only three of them comply with the requirements of the law in matters of privacy policy and consent to the processing of personal data.

Moreover, 12 of the 21 sites analyzed openly encouraged citizens to share their personal data without any explanation as to how or for what purpose they carried out the processing, and without asking for consent.

That is, we are talking not only about a negligent attitude towards the protection of personal information of Ukrainians, but also about a direct violation of the law. However, in fact, the situation is even worse if you analyze the technical side of the websites of some politicians.

Thus, two cases of using trackers from the Russian service Yandex were recorded. Let us remember that we are talking about politicians and political forces represented in the Ukrainian parliament. In the third year of a full-scale war, the use of such trackers by the aggressor country poses a real threat, because in this way we cannot control what data of Ukrainians gets to the Russians.

Some organizations associated with politicians collect sensitive information. This primarily concerns those who provide assistance to vulnerable populations and the military. The websites of such NGOs and foundations have application forms where you need to provide personal information. Control over its storage and use must comply with security standards, but in many cases even basic privacy policies are lacking.

People who interact with these organizations to provide or receive assistance are unlikely to expect that the data they provide will then be used for political campaigning. If foundations or NGOs do indeed transfer data to parties, as was stated in anonymous interviews, then users should be informed about this. However, the absence of any information about the processing of personal data on the websites of many politically affiliated organizations raises concerns about their further dissemination, use and protection and does not allow us to exclude potential abuse of them for political purposes.

Every person has the right to both give consent to the processing of personal data and demand their withdrawal or deletion. However, now in Ukraine there is almost no control over their distribution.

Let us recall that the “Honestly” Movement has repeatedly recorded the use of personal data of Ukrainians for fraudulent financing of political parties.