Sofia municipality and mobile phone operators are on the list of the Commission for Personal Data Protection (CPDP) as most common offenders of personal data protection legislation, the watchdog told a news conference on May 8 2008.

Sofia municipality's most common violation was the way it handled the parking in the central area of the city, mediapool.bg said. Currently it is a paid zone with only people living in the area allowed to park there for free.

To do that they are asked to put a printed copy of the vehicle's registration under the windshield because it has the vehicle's owner name and address. All this data however is visible to everyone.

The city hall has said it would stop this practise by replacing the printed copies with specially printed passes but until now nothing has been actually done.      

The mobile phone operators' violation was their requirement to make printed copies of the clients' ID documents, the CPDP said.  There were cases when personal data have ended up in the hands of companies collecting unpaid phone bills, the CPDP said.

Mobile operators were advised to make the font of the text in the clients' contracts saying what would happen with their personal data to become the same size as the rest of the text.

Another problem was employers' habit of signing “fake” labour contracts with people who did not even know about. This was a way for employers to make their payroll appear bigger than it actually is in order to win projects that required a certain number of employees, according to the watchdog. The problem was, however, where employers were getting the personal data of the “fake” employees from.