Twelve months after police charged two men with compromising Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine management system, the province has identified and started notifying the 360,000 residents whose personal data was copied.
The Canadian Press reports the government said the delay is because of the time it took to determine the scale and impact of the breach.
The province said for about 95 per cent of the 360,000 people affected, only their names and/or phone numbers were involved. CITY-TV news quoted the province saying that four per cent of individuals had their health card number compromised.
Two people – a 22-year-old from Gloucester, Ont. who worked at the vaccine contact centre in the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, and a Quebec man – have been each charged with unauthorized use of a computer.
CBC News reported that authorities became suspicious when people who had scheduled their vaccine appointments or accessed their vaccine certificates through the provincial booking system complained of getting spam text messages asking for personal information.
