The Latvian campaign page of the European Citizens’ Initiative for UBI on Facebook was hit by a cyber attack on Thursday and Friday, during which numerous unrelated advertising posts were created, and a $ 30 advertising bill was created for the administrator. In the interests of security, it is planned to create a completely new page and remove the old one as soon as possible.
As a result of the cyber-attack, statistics from the page show that its posts reached more than 1.6 million users in those two days. According to the Estonian coordinator of the initiative, Jaanus Nurmoja, it is clear that this is not the target group, ie Latvian citizens, because otherwise, and with the relevant advertising, Latvia’s signature yield would have increased by more than a thousand or even multiplied in a few days.
According to Aija Lasmane, the Latvian coordinator of the European Citizens’ Initiative, the advertising posts referred to the origin of Indonesia. However, as Nurmoja pointed out, this does not provide reassurance that the attack actually originated in Indonesia. “I know that the creator of the site lives there and of course I alarmed him. Based on his feedback, it seems that the perpetrators somehow managed to abuse his account.”
The signature campaign for the “Start Unconditional Basic Income throughout the EU” campaign runs until Christmas, with signatures provided at https://sign.eci-ubi.eu There are currently 2214 signatures in Estonia and 3003 in Latvia. A total of one million signatures are needed, with seven countries needing to exceed the national signature quota, which is 4935 in Estonia and 5640 in Latvia.
The Latvian UBI page was created on Facebook in 2013, during the previous campaign. However, due to the absence of national coordinator, the page stood idle until the beginning of this year.