{"id":7936,"date":"2018-09-20T08:34:39","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T16:34:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/?p=7936"},"modified":"2018-09-24T08:38:52","modified_gmt":"2018-09-24T16:38:52","slug":"data-breach-sees-farm-names-end-up-in-hands-of-animal-rights-activists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/2018\/09\/20\/data-breach-sees-farm-names-end-up-in-hands-of-animal-rights-activists\/","title":{"rendered":"Data breach sees farm names end up in hands of animal rights activists"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Farmers Weekly<\/p>\n<p>An accountancy firm waited two months to inform clients of a data breach that eventually saw farmers\u2019 names and addresses end up in the hands of animal rights activists.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/3646018a_stop-the-cull.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-7937\" src=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/3646018a_stop-the-cull-300x169.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"169\" srcset=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/3646018a_stop-the-cull-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/3646018a_stop-the-cull-768x433.jpg 768w, https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/3646018a_stop-the-cull.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>The breach occurred after accountants and financial planners Old Mill uploaded a mailing list containing 7,363 names and addresses to its webspace. Although not publicly visible, the list could be found and downloaded via a Google web search.<\/p>\n<p>Old Mill said it was notified by a third party on 6 July that the mailing list had been accessed, downloaded and copied. The firm said it immediately took down the list and requested that the copy be destroyed.<\/p>\n<h2>No risk of harm<\/h2>\n<p>The company said it took legal advice at the time and concluded it was not necessary to notify farmers of the breach since \u201con balance we did not believe there was any risk of harm taking into account the limited nature of the information involved\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>See also:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.fwi.co.uk\/business\/farm-businesses-must-get-ready-for-new-data-rules\">Businesses must get ready for new data rules<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Details included in the mailing list were limited to names, salutations, company names and addresses. It did not include any telephone numbers, email addresses or financial data. Old Mill said it had considered the risk of third parties accessing the list to be \u201cvery low\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>But the firm became aware on 12 September that a link to download the mailing list in its complete form had appeared in an article on the anti-badger cull website www.innocentbadger.com. Links to the article were posted on the Stop the Cull Facebook page.<\/p>\n<h2>Badger cull<\/h2>\n<p>The article also listed the farmer directors of companies involved in culling badgers to combat bovine tuberculosis in cattle \u2013 although Old Mill said this information was unconnected to the mailing list, which contained no reference to badger culling.<\/p>\n<p>Old Mill has now written to farmers informing them of the breach. In a letter dated 14 September, the firm said it had reported the matter to the Information Commissioner\u2019s Office. It said it was also working with its solicitors, and the police, asking for the mailing list to be removed.<\/p>\n<p>It said: \u201cWe could not have anticipated the deliberate, hostile and potentially criminal actions that have taken place. However, we acknowledge that an error took place when the list was originally allowed to be available via a search engine and we apologise for this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Farmers Weekly An accountancy firm waited two months to inform clients of a data breach that eventually saw farmers\u2019 names and addresses end up in the hands of animal rights activists. The breach occurred after accountants and financial planners Old Mill uploaded a mailing list containing 7,363 names and addresses to its webspace. Although not &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/2018\/09\/20\/data-breach-sees-farm-names-end-up-in-hands-of-animal-rights-activists\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7937,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7938,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7936\/revisions\/7938"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}