If you're like me and over half a million Canadians you may have just found out the people you trusted to keep all your personal information safe as failed you. Not just failed to protect the information they promised to protect but failed in reporting us when they "lost" the information. It seems Human Services Canada has "miss placed" a portable hard drive as well as a thumb drive containing the person information of any one who applied for a student loan from 2000 to 2006. Now one would think if they would to store the information on a portable drive that it would be at least encrypted but that was not the case. To what I have been able to find out neither the portable drive nor thumb drive had any form of encryption on it. In fact placing our personal information on such devices is against their own policies and regulations. And after all this, putting countless people at risk of identity theft and other countless possibilities they expect use to take "We're sorry – and we're trying to make sure it never happens again."
I am sorry as one of the people affected by this a simple apology and empty promise doesn't even start to make up for such a mistake. Not only did they fail to notice when the information went "missing" but when they did they took over a month to report RCMP to look into the incident. And they took even longer tell those affected that their personal information was compromised. When I contacted human resources to find out how this could happen the representative I spoke to couldn't answer any of my questions. All I was told was that they were sure the drives haven't left the property and it has to be somewhere in the building. They failed to mention who lost the information or what was found during the investigation just that one was conducted. All I was told was my personal information was used for an internal survey they were conducting at the time. They didn't even tell me why my information was used without my permission and why they would need all my personal information for something like that.
Like many Canadians I am outrage that something like this was allowed to happen especially in the digital age we live in. I personally use a portable drive to store my work but the drive I have is encrypted. It's encrypted in such a way I have to type in a password into the drive itself before the computer is even able to see the drive. If I happen to forget my pass code well the only way to resetting it reformatting the entire drive and erasing all the information it has stored. If an individual such as myself goes to such a level to protect his personal files one would think that a government organization would go to further lengths to protect their own. Every thumb drive, portable drive and hard disk should be encrypted to such a level that it would be nearly impossible to crack. But as it seems the government couldn't be bothered to do that and drag their heels to admit anything happened.
I found it offensive when the representative I spoke to tried to assure me the investigation so far shown the drive have yet to leave the building. If they haven't been able to find one portable drive and one thumb drive in four month than the possibility it still being inside the building to be small. When I point that out to the representative she kept totting the company line trying to assure me that they are doing everything in their power to discover what happened. If they want to assure me they could have pay to have my and everyone else affect by this SIN number changed. The person who was responsible for the "missing" drives should be charge with gross negligence and publicly made known. I want to know who gave this person authorization to store my personal information in such a manner that any person with even a moderate computer knowledge could simply access by plugging it in any computer with a USB port. I want to hear that they have been fired from their positions and lost any pension or any possible benefits because of their negligence.
Anyone could have my information and using it for whatever purpose they wish. I can tell you that I feel violated by this breach of my privacy. Till this moment I had perfect credit rating and was considered debt free. Now my credit rating could drop, at risk for loans to be taken out in my name and have little protection against it. People now can apply to EI, fill out passports or several things in my name since they have enough information to do so. The possibilities of potential misuse is terrifying and as people that have been victims of identity theft before have all pointed out that it has taken years and thousands of their own hard earned money to solved. I know one person that has criminal record because someone stole his identity and caught drinking and driving. He nearly lost his job over it, only the fact the DUI charge was on the other side of the country during a time that he couldn't possibly be there was the only reason he wasn't fired. And even though he didn't do it he still lost weeks of work trying to prove it. This is what we are facing now and into the future.
I believe that our leaders don't fully grasp what people are potentially facing now. A million Canadians are now at risk for the rest of their lives of their identity being stolen. Not just the six years they promised to watch our account but the rest of our lives. Whoever has this information could sit on it till the six years are up and sell it on the web. There are already web site dedicated to selling people information and any one of ours could pop up on one of these. There are four different class action lawsuits occurring against the federal government because of this incident. I have personally signed up for my local class action lawsuit. The government should be held accountable and made to pay for this mistake instead of trying to sweep it under the rug. I hope this lawsuit causes some serious changes within our and how our government deal with our information and how they approach such issues in the future. It is time our government go through an ideology shift and come to understand the impact their mistakes have on us, the people they are suppose to be serving to begin with. It is time they do more to protect us instead of thinking of how to get more money out of us.
