A French MP has filed a bill to better protect founders’ personal data following a wave of violent attacks targeting high-profile crypto execs.
In the past few months a number of crypto founders and their relatives have been violently abducted in France and held for ransom. This includes Ledger cofounder David Ballant and his partner, who were kidnapped and released in January.
In May, four men unsuccessfully attempted to abduct the daughter and grandchild of the CEO of cryptocurrency exchange platform Paymium. After the attack, interior minister Bruno Retailleau met with several founders in the sector to find ways to improve their safety.
Observers have called on the government to implement privacy-preserving measures for founders, in particular to hide their personal addresses online.
Paul Midy, an MP in president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition who focuses on tech and startups, filed a bill earlier this week in response to these concerns.
“We have to take measures to protect our entrepreneurs, particularly in crypto assets, which are currently at risk: there have been three abductions and one attempted abduction in only a few months,” wrote Midy in a LinkedIn post.
“This is why I have filed a bill to pseudonymise entrepreneurs’ personal addresses, which are currently widely available online.”
What does the law propose?
In many cases when creating a company French entrepreneurs have to register both their professional and personal addresses with a number of government organisations. This information is made publicly available thanks to specialised third-party open data platforms like Société.com and Pappers.
“It is obviously legitimate and sometimes useful that some information is known by the public, if only to determine the existence of a company,” reads the bill. “But it is necessary to ensure the publication of available information on the internet doesn’t compromise entrepreneurs’ security.”
Under the law, government operators would need to hide founders’ personal addresses when sharing data with third-party platforms, and give founders the option to mask the company’s address altogether when it is also their home one.
Third-party platforms would also need to hide any mention of entrepreneurs’ personal addresses in existing documents, with fines of up to €45k in case of non-compliance.
The bill is expected to be examined by parliamentarians in the form of an amendment over the coming months.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/crypto-attacks-bill-founders-personal-data/
