Shafaq News/ Iraq's Digital Media Center (DMC) on Tuesday warned that the mishandling of the "digital wastes" of the government departments might jeopardize the privacy of the Iraqi citizens.

A statement of DMC urged the government to install a program that applies standard procedures to handle those wastes that might be used by malicious parties to extract the personal data of citizens or tamper with the cybersecurity of some government departments.

"Computers of some state departments usually contain vital and sensitive information. Sometimes, old computers might be disposed of without the proper procedures that ensure that stored data would not be recovered or restored," the statement said.

"Even if the data were deleted by the regular means, many parties have the capability to recover the data deleted from the hard disk, even if it were destroyed."

Digital expert Dr. Fadhel al-Doukhi said many parties, by fraud or impersonation, are capable of gaining access to the servers where the data obtained from questionnaires the citizens fill for the government every now and then, even if stored in remote areas inside or outside Iraq.