Parish email breach investigated

Emma Martins was alerted to the mistake by the parish itself after the email, which notified parishioners of the newly agreed parish rate, was sent out on Friday.

In a statement Ms Martins said: ‘The Parish of St Helier informed my office of a data breach during the afternoon of Friday 14 July 2017.

‘The breach related to an email sent to St Helier ratepayers in which the email addresses of all recipients were included, and therefore disclosed.

‘It appears the recipients’ emails were erroneously entered into the “cc” box rather than the “bcc” box.

‘It is not mandatory for data controllers to report data breaches to my office under the current legal regime (Data Protection (Jersey) Law 2005).

‘However, it will be mandatory from 2018, when new data protection legislation is due for implementation. As such, we welcome the proactive position taken in respect of this matter by the Parish of St Helier.’

She added: ‘The Office of the Information Commissioner has received a number of complaints and inquiries relating to this incident.

‘We will now seek further, detailed information from the Parish of St Helier to better understand how the incident happened and the steps they now propose to take.

‘While this investigation remains ongoing, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.’

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