A Surrey man is worried he’s about to be victimized by identity theft for a second time.
Not so long ago, someone broke into his home and stole his passport and credit cards, causing him all kinds of grief.
Now, Antonio Vieira just received a letter saying he’s one of thousands of Canadians whose personal information has gone missing on a computer drive the federal government lost.
The letter was advising that his pension, banking, and other key government information has gone missing in the hands of an employee, and it may be compromised.
Vieira is hoping to move, buy property and get a mortgage, but now he may be the victim of identity theft.
While Human Resources data is generally kept on servers behind firewalls and passwords, it appears the employee was able to put personal information for five thousand Canadians on a USB memory stick with no encryption to protect it.
The London Free Press broke the privacy breach, and quotes Human Resources as saying it ‘limits portable media devices – and where unavoidable, encryption is required.”
Antonio wanted to know what the government would do to help fix the problem, but heard there is nothing they can now do.
Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddard was unavailable to speak with Global News today.
Now Vieira has to write to the Equifax Credit Bureau asking for Credit alerts on his account.
He is questioning just how many other British Columbians have had their Human Resources Canada personal info breached, and just what the government is doing about it.
“My concern is identification fraud, people going out there doing whatever with my personal information,” says Vieira. “It is scary. It scares me.”
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