The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) will be locking 800,000 online taxpayer accounts on Saturday, the agency said Friday.
The move comes nearly a month after an unspecified number of accounts were locked as a “precaution” after an internal analysis revealed some credentials such as user IDs and passwords may have been compromised.
“Like the accounts that were locked in February, these user IDs and passwords were not compromised as a result of a breach of CRA’s online systems, rather they may have been obtained by unauthorized third parties and through a variety of means by sources external to the CRA. The total number of accounts impacted is roughly 800,000,” CRA spokesperson Christopher Doody told Global News in an email.
“As a preventative measure, these additional CRA user IDs and passwords, along with those associated with locked accounts in February, will be revoked and instructions will be made available to impacted individuals on how to regain access to their CRA account.”
Affected users first received an alert on Feb. 16 saying their emails had been disconnected from their CRA accounts.
Global News reported last week that some taxpayers who were locked out last month were still unable to access their accounts, and had trouble getting information from the CRA about when the issue might be resolved.
“It should be noted that these preventative measures are not isolated incidents and may become more frequent to safeguard taxpayers’ information,” Doody said.