NOVEMBER 1, 2021 – Scary days. Apparently the email from the school board, which had a link to a document on the EOHU website was DOWNLOADABLE.
“Sent: Sun, 31 Oct 2021 at 17:01Subject: Communication Error – October 30, 2021
Dear Parents/Guardians,
We are writing to provide you with information about a regrettable privacy incident that occurred yesterday.
Yesterday evening at approximately 6:15 pm we sent an email from Communications@cdsbeo.on.ca to parents/guardians at St. Joseph Catholic Secondary School that inadvertently included a link to a document containing student and parents/guardians’ information. The document listed all students at the school along with each student’s grade level, school student number and date of birth. It also listed the parents/guardians of each student along with contact information and an indication as to who the student resides with.
We disabled the link later in the evening but believe that less than half of the recipients clicked on the link. These individuals may or may not have successfully viewed the document given it was in the .csv file format. We have nonetheless emailed all of them to request that they promptly delete all copies, contact us if they require any assistance, and provide us with information about any other individuals who have or may have come into possession of the document.
We are sorry this has occurred, and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused our school community. Our top priority is currently on containment and investigation. We will write the school community again when our efforts are complete and include information about how we will prevent a recurrence of this incident.”
Sorry of course doesn’t cut this. Perhaps Paul Roumeliotis should be spending more time focused on his job rather than on CFRA radio chirping out whatever comes out of Queen’s Park? Or enforcing his own health guidelines that sees stores in Cornwall like No Frills allowing customers in with no masks and grocery clerks only wearing faceshields while the area has some of the highest Covid rates and lowest vax rates? Do you feel like you’re getting your $400K worth for his services? I know I don’t.
A specialist we spoke to said that spreadsheet on the EOHU website should’ve been encrypted and even if the link to it was used it certainly shouldn’t have opened in the manner it did releasing personal information for the student population and their parents & guardians.
Robert Cadieux, the parent who came to this newspaper for assistance because the Police wouldn’t do anything, and the EOHU wasn’t answering phones over the weekends questioned whether the initial email was a Covid-19 alert as he has a child attending the school.
Sunday night that email finally arrived confirming a case at St. Joe’s, but that means valuable days were lost and of course a downloadable list of Student DOB’s, ID#s, and family contact info are now floating on the net.
The School board did not respond to our email on Sunday when we broke the story and the EOHU actually boycotts CFN and our 20,000 weekly viewers.
If you have more to share on this you can reach us via info@cornwallfreenews.com