The revelation that the nation's pension system has been hacked on an unprecedented scale may affect ongoing Diet deliberations on a bill to assign citizens individual numbers to improve social security management.
The Japan Pension Service said during a hastily arranged news conference Monday that its employees opened a virus-infected email attachment last month, leading to 1.25 million cases of personal data being leaked.
The course of events is likely to fuel concerns over the misuse of personal data, as it came just after the Lower House passed a bill last month to introduce the My Number system to assign citizens individual numbers to improve social security management, government sources said.