Victims of a mailing list leak by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) have complained after receiving unwanted and “strange” emails.
Last week MOPAC officials who sent out emails confirming registration for a series of public consultation meetings included the names and addresses of all recipients in the TO field.
This meant each recipient could see the names and email addresses of all other recipients and could contact them directly. MOPAC says it sent out a second email asking recipients to delete the original.
Despite the request, recipients of the original message have contacted MayorWatch to complain that they’ve received unwanted emails from another recipient seeking to gain their support against a claimed “homophobic hate campaign”.
The emails directly reference the recipient’s planned attendance at the consultation meeting, confirming the MOPAC mailing list as the source of their contact information.
Another reader complained that he was “now receiving strange mails which are intruding into my computer, and no concern of mine.”
Following our original story, MOPAC sent out a second email on Friday apologising for the error.
Commenting on the unwanted emails, the 18th January email says: “We are aware that one of the recipients is using the email addresses, despite our request for the relevant email to be deleted. We very much regret that your personal data is being used in this way. We can only apologise again for our original mistake.”
The email also confirms that the original publication of the email addresses “was a breach of the Data Protection Act.”
Some members of the mailing list have questioned whether they need to change their email addresses to protect their online security and privacy.
Despite an apology from MOPAC, the Information Commissioner’s Office last week told MayorWatch that it would “be making further enquiries into this incident”.
Sarah says
As a recipient of said emails, I find it perturbing that others on the list, who are only on that list because of a professd interest in policing, seem to have such a dismissive attitude towards people who have been victimised by the police and left with very little redress. The cases I have seen are shocking, not only in the appalling treatment suffered from the Metropolitan Police, including their supposed Department of Professional Standards, but also in terms of the utter lack of effective redress. It seems that MOPAC are not only incompetent at protecting data, but even worse at protecting the public from police misconduct. Why are we paying for MOPAC to preside over these vicious, corrupt brutes?