Bell Canada has notified customers of illegal information access from a possible data breach. Photo courtesy CBC.
Customers of Bell Canada were notified Tuesday that a data breach has led to personal information being illegally accessed.
The breach appears to have accessed names and email addresses but did not compromise credit card or banking information.
The federal Privacy Commissioner Office was notified of the breach but is limited to how much it can reveal.
Additional security measures have been put in place by Bell for authentication and identification requirements.
The Montreal-based company announced an anonymous hacker got customers’ names, phone numbers and email addresses eight months ago.
There are reports 100,000 customers are affected, but Bell has not confirmed that number.
Changes to the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act is being reviewed by the government.
Companies would be required to notify people of a serious data breach.
Alberta already has mandatory reporting requirements in place.
With files from Canadian Press.
Andy Neal
