Goverment has lost thousands of personal information of people who borrowed Canada Student Loan Program

The Ministry of Human Resources and Skills Development Canada has lost a hard drive with the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people who borrowed Canada Student Loans Program.

Portable hard drive contained names, dates of birth, social security numbers, addresses and 583,000 students borrowers of Canada Student Loans Loans balances for the period 2000-2006. It also contains the personal data of 250 employees of HRSDC.

In a statement, the department says there is no evidence that the data are accessed or misused. No transfer or medical information was on the hard disk. The same apparatus was used as a backup storage for the data.

The hard drive missing Nov. 5, 2012, during an investigation into an incident of private life such distinction between HRSDC. The incident was reported to the RCMP 7 January 2013, according to a press release.

HRSDC will letters to victims, even as they. No contact information for all courses the department encourages people to a free number to call to see if they are interested and have any questions on this subject.

24:00 ET Information: From Monday, January 14, 2013, people 1-866-885-1866 (or 416-572-1113 outside North America) calling 08.00-8.

Information borrowers Quebec, Nunavut and the Northwest Territories was "not on the disk, because the provinces and territories of their own programs of student loans.

"I know all Canadians, I want to express my disappointment with departmental officials in this episode unacceptable and avoidable in the processing of personal data of Canadians." So I departmental officials sentenced to a series of take immediate action to ensure that such a situation does not happen again, "said Diane Finley, Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development in a statement.

Some of the new security policy of the department include a ban on portable hard drives and USB sticks are not approved mandatory training for all staff on the handling of sensitive documents and further disciplinary action against the staff.


More information about World News: World News | Government loses personal data of half a million student borrowers