Source: Radio New Zealand
Kāinga Ora has acknowledged it breached the privacy of tenants. RNZ / Nate McKinnon
Kāinga Ora has acknowledged it breached the privacy of tenants, after the email addresses of more than a thousand Auckland tenants were exposed in a group email.
On Monday, the agency sent out an email asking how tenants would like to receive future correspondence.
Kāinga Ora said the tenants’ email addresses were mistakenly entered into the recipients’ line, instead of being blind carbon copied (BCC), which would’ve concealed their inboxes.
“We are providing additional training to help prevent these types of incidents,” said Taina Jones, the regional director for Auckland North and West.
Kāinga Ora said it’d notified the office of the privacy commissioner, and was contacting those who received the email to apologise for any disruption this error may have caused.
Earlier, a tenant told RNZ they’d been continuously receiving responses from other tenants who’d been included in the same email, and that it’d been flooding their inbox.
The tenant said when they clicked on some of the email addresses, they could see people’s numbers as well.
However, Kāinga Ora said no other tenant information was exposed, other than the email addresses.
The privacy commissioner’s office said it expected Kāinga Ora to investigate the breach, and any harm caused.
“OPC can confirm that Kāinga Ora has been in contact with us to talk through their situation,
“We will continue to work with Kāinga Ora as it investigates further the privacy breach, including ensuring they are aware of their legal obligations in relation to a privacy breach that either has caused or is likely to cause anyone serious harm,
“We would expect Kāinga Ora to provide any further detail they would want to share in relation to this,” it said in a statement.
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
