August 26, 2014 10.25 am This story is over 122 months old

Lincolnshire County Council apologises to 4,000 people over personal data breach

Email error: Lincolnshire County Council is apologising after a ‘data breach’ which led to the names and email addresses of more than 4,000 people being sent to some 250 email addresses.

Lincolnshire County Council is apologising after a ‘data breach’ which led to the names and email addresses of more than 4,000 people being sent to some 250 email addresses.

The incident happened on August 6 when 250 people received an email regarding changes to the County Council’s jobs site, to which the document containing personal data was inadvertently attached.

The council says it “immediately recalled the message” and contacted those who had received it, asking them to delete the information.

Those whose details were released will be notified and apologised to, the council said.

A full investigation has been carried out and Lincolnshire County Council said it put in place a number of new safety precautions.

Judith Hetherington Smith, Chief Information and Commissioning Officer, said: “Once we’d realised this had happened, we acted quickly to try to put things right, contacting all those who had received the data.

“We take the confidentiality of all personal information very seriously, and have a range of measures in place to help keep it secure.

“We are in the process of notifying and apologising to all those affected, and are looking again at whether there are any additional steps we can take to help prevent this happening again.”