Lambeth council has notified the Information Commissioners Office – the authority dealing with data protection – following a mass email that, it says, “did not function as intended”.
The email was an invitation to register for the council’s online council tax service.
A second email from council chief executive Sean Harriss asked people who had received the email to delete it because some of them may have been able to see the email addresses of other Lambeth council tax payers.
“Despite taking suitable precautions in protecting individuals’ email addresses, the email did not function as intended,” said Harriss.
“Some recipients may have been able to see other customer email addresses attached to the item. We are sorry for this disclosure and are working hard with our technical partners to understand how this has happened.
“We take your data and privacy seriously. This issue will be fully investigated to prevent this from happening again. We have notified the Information Commissioners Office and will work with them as they conduct their own investigation into this incident.”
“We take your data and privacy seriously – that’s odd when they emailed me the name and address of everyone who lived on my Estate they didn’t even acknowledge they made a mistake. And when I applied for a Blue Badge they seemed very relaxed at losing my confidential personal details National Insurance no, Passport No, Bank details and address. Strange really when two other people had been to see their councillor about the same problem!
Perhaps Harris just means that Lambeth takes our data and privacy seriously when we have been caught out on such a mass scale doing yet another data protection balls up!