Colin Dacre reports:
The Town of Oliver is advising residents about a privacy breach after municipal staff accidentally sent out private tax information to three email addresses.
“During the process of email notification to property owners of their 2019 property tax notice, an error was made in which the attachments on emails to three individual property owners included a list of all properties on the town’s property tax roll,” the letter to residents states.
Oliver Daily News reports a total of 2,345 such letters were sent out to homeowners. Only residential property tax info was breached.
You can read the full story at The Oliver Daily News.
I’m not confident that I understand this breach. Is this information not public rolls/records anyway? Under the laws here, the owner of a property and the address and tax amount is generally public information. What was the “personal” information here that was breached?
Update: A subsequent report in the Oliver Chronicle answers my question. It states:
The information breached included mailing address and civic address. The Town believes that there is not a reasonable risk of financial harm to residents.
The other information on a property tax notice is public and accessible on BC Assessments website for each property – roll number, mortgage name or address or code (if a property owner is paying to a mortgage provider), 2019 property tax charges for example.