Insurance customers’ contact info dropped into MASC email

Crown crop insurance agency warns of privacy breach

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Published: June 2, 2020

(Dave Bedard photo)

A contact list of crop insurance customers at Manitoba Agricultural Services Corp. has gone out via email to several dozen of the Crown ag insurance agency’s customers.

MASC on Monday said a file containing names and contact information of an unspecified number of AgriInsurance clients was “attached in error” to an email sent last Tuesday to 134 Manitoba producers.

“The information that was sent did not include clients’ social insurance numbers or financial information,” MASC said in its notice.

Producers affected by the breach can expect to be contacted directly by MASC, the agency said, but any farmers with further questions may also contact MASC via email.

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MASC said it has put “additional process controls” in place and reported the privacy breach to Manitoba’s provincial ombudsman. It also said it “will conduct a review of its processes and procedures to minimize the risk of an incident of this nature occurring again.”

Affected farmers have the right to file a privacy complaint with the ombudsman’s office as per the provincial Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, MASC added. — Glacier FarmMedia Network

About the author

Dave Bedard

Dave Bedard

Editor, Grainews

Farm-raised in northeastern Saskatchewan. B.A. Journalism 1991. Local newspaper reporter in Saskatchewan turned editor and farm writer in Winnipeg. (Life story edited by author for time and space.)

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