- The year so far has been loaded with news of massive losses of highly confidential and supposedly secure client information.

Most of the reports have come from the US, centering on multi-nationals such as LexisNexis and CitiFinancial.

But Equifax, a major Canadian credit agency which in March last year gave reports with social insurance and bank account numbers, credit histories and addresses on 1,400 people to crooks posing as legitimate clients, has now been caught in a screw-up which, while not quite in the same league as NL and CF’s, still shows how very unsafe ‘safe’ personal data can be.

An Ontario man who’d been “battling the agency for two years to update his credit history” received a fax with the addresses, social insurance numbers, driver's licences and credit card information on three people living in other parts of Ontario, and in Quebec, says the Toronto Sun, going on:.

“When his wife called the company to notify them of the privacy breach, she was told it was ‘impossible’ for such an error to occur and that they were too busy to check their faxes".

After questions from the Sun, "Equifax spokesman Marie-Lynn Colangelo confirmed yesterday that the private information was indeed sent in error" and, "We've launched an investigation with our technology (department)," she's quoted as saying.

"We've certainly shut down the fax server at this point. We don't know exactly what's happened but an investigation is in full course'."

See:-
Toronto Sun - Credit info in wrong hands, June 8, 2005