Ontario police pause Crime Stoppers after massive data leak

Several Ontario police services have suspended their use of Crime Stoppers after a CBC News investigation found that more than 1.5 million tips submitted to programs across Canada over 25 years were exposed in a data breach.

Toronto, York Region, Halton Region, Windsor, Kingston, Cornwall and Hamilton police announced they have paused partnerships with local Crime Stoppers chapters and are asking the public to contact them directly with tips, CBC reported. Durham Region police said they have removed references directing people to the program. Waterloo Regional Police said it stopped promoting Crime Stoppers as a reporting option in early July, soon after learning of the incident.

Toronto Crime Stoppers chair Sean Sportun said in a statement late Wednesday that the chapter was pausing its program effective immediately. “I had to make the difficult decision to pause the program to protect those that use our platform,” he told CBC News on Thursday. Four Ontario programs, in Toronto, Guelph Wellington, Peel and Waterloo Region, also said they will no longer accept anonymous tips.

CBC said its analysis of a copy of the hacked data found that more than 850,000 tips, about half of all Canadian records it identified, contained personally identifiable information. The broadcaster said it could not determine in every instance whether the information belonged to a tipster, a victim or someone accused of a crime. It counted more than 179,000 leaked tips submitted to the Toronto chapter, the largest number of any chapter.

The tips were held on a software platform called P3, which is run by U.S.-based Navigate360 and manages Crime Stoppers tips internationally. Toronto Crime Stoppers said in its statement that Navigate360 first told it the leak did not include Canadian data, then that Toronto’s data was not affected, and finally confirmed in July that about three years of Toronto data was involved. CBC said Navigate360 had not responded to its requests for comment.

Toronto police said the findings “raise serious concerns regarding the protection of confidential information provided through the Crime Stoppers program.”

Not every chapter has stopped taking tips. Mark J. LeBelle, director of digital media services for Crime Stoppers in New Brunswick, said the program will keep accepting anonymous tips after resetting passwords, requiring two-factor authentication and training local operators. He said the software is safer than it was before the breach.

The disclosure comes as other large Canadian companies deal with their own breaches. Loblaw has also begun notifying about two million customers that their personal data was exposed.

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