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A couple hundred people in the province have been dealing with a privacy breach after a simple mistake within Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Advanced Education.
According to a report from the province’s Information and Privacy Commissioner, a mistake was made in February last year in a spreadsheet, leading to the wrong address being put on mailing labels.
As a result, the government mailed 415 statements of pension, retirement, annuity and other income, T4A slips, to the wrong people, affecting 277 people as some were mailed more than one slip.
These slips related to student disability grants and included the person’s name, social insurance number, and amounts received.
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The ministry didn’t find out about it until it got calls from two people reporting they received slips for someone else. It mailed out the correct slips to people that same day and then set about dealing with the privacy breach.
According to the commissioner’s report, the ministry notified the affected parties in April, then in May, on the advice of the privacy commissioner, also wrote to the wrong addresses and asked them to return the mail to the ministry unopened.
The commissioner said some people responded that they’d already returned the mail to Canada Post, or knew the person it was intended for and delivered it themselves.
As of December, there were still 154 slips that were unaccounted for, affecting 121 people.
Through the commissioner’s investigation, he found the ministry took reasonable steps to contain and investigate the breach, as well as taking steps to stop it from happening again.
Among those steps, the ministry said it was eliminating paper and mailing and developing a system to automate the delivery of tax slips — it’s expected to be in place in Fall 2025.
The ministry didn’t include in its notices to those affected information about the risks around privacy breaches and didn’t offer credit monitoring.
The commissioner said in his report that the risks of identity theft are increasing and he recommended the ministry offer credit monitoring to those affected for one year.
