Isle of Man government agency data breach : The Isle of Man 's income tax department created a Twitter account in late March, and in the process of informing taxpayers about the new communication channel, the institution managed to leak 5,000 email addresses of its taxpayers. The department has now apologized for the blunder and launched an investigation.
The privacy leak blunder was attributed to an operational error that allowed groups of customers to see other customers' addresses in the "To" field of the e-mail they received .
Someone forgot to blind carbon copy (BCC) the recipient list, resulting in the email addresses being visible to all recipients.
“The error occurred when, as part of an information program regarding the new Twitter account, the Income Tax Directoratesent 10 e-mails with 500 recipients each, but with the recipients’ e-mail addresses clearly visible,” the statement from the Ministry of Interior agency states. The institution subsequently realized the error and took the necessary measures to ensure that the unfortunate incident would not be repeated. Part of the measures it took was to inform the Data Protection Supervisor so that the necessary investigation into the incident could be carried out.
However, regardless of the measures taken, the error cannot be further corrected as messages cannot be recalled. There is no evidence to suggest that any recipient has exploited the silly error at this time, but no one can be sure of that.
Those on the exposed list have been notified and have received assurances that the ministry's computer system was not to blame, but that the error was the responsibility of a careless employee.
The department also apologized for the leak, but it's still unclear whether it has been accepted by all exposed recipients. Meanwhile, the agency's Twitter now has over 207 followers and 24 tweets.
