Crime Stoppers hack exposes personal information of tens of thousands of Canadians

There is an extraordinary appeal from CrimeStoppers in Toronto. Don't send tips. It follows a CBC News investigation that found millions of those tips had been hacked, potentially revealing the identities of confidential tipsters. Linda Ward looking at this. Wow. What more can I say? Yeah, I mean, they've told the National Anonymous Call Centre not to take any calls for them. Don't take any information that people try to give them. And if we take a look at the website, you can even see that they've taken down their submit a tip option feature from their website. They say hackers stole data from the third party software they used to collect tips back in March. They weren't told about it, they say, until June. And in that time, 177,000 Toronto tips were stolen between January 2022 and November 2025. that's about 15,000 names as well that were released so Sean Gordon, he's the chair of Toronto CrimeStoppers, he issued a statement late yesterday saying it's come to light that some of those original tips containing potentially identifying information were stolen from P3 Navigate360 which is the company that owns the software has not told us whether those names belong to people who submitted tips to people who were named in those tips or both, they go on to say people trusted us with their safety, we will not resume taking tips until we can stand behind the system that protects them so they are going dark for now, they still haven't seen, they say the text of the tips that has been stolen in this breach then yesterday of course that CBC investigation revealed some of that information that they had not seen since June. They say they've been working on a safer system, on a safer process to protect the tipsters, and they're going to have more to share on that in the coming days. Canada's largest police force in Toronto has relied on CrimeStoppers to help solve crimes in the past. What are they now doing? They've been partnered with them since 1984. And CrimeStoppers, they say, has had a big hand in solving a lot of their investigations. It's been pretty useful to Toronto police, but they say they're now doing a review of the data breach. They're assessing the measures that Toronto Crime Stoppers is taking to make their systems safer. They issued a statement through their Corporate Communications Office yesterday, and here's what they say. The information that has become available raises serious concerns regarding the protection of confidential information provided through the Crime Stoppers program. The safety of members of the public, tipsters and police personnel is paramount. And they say, you know, we appreciate that they're taking it seriously, but stress as well. You know, we are separate organizations. Do not conflate Toronto Police with Toronto Crime Stoppers. All of this, of course, cold comfort for anyone who may have given a tip to these organizations and think, well, maybe my name's out there. Are you in danger? Right. Like that is, you know, you think about retribution around some of these things. Look, there is this review underway. What happens until then? So the tips are still going to want to be shared by members of the public, but they don't have this confidential place to send them to in Toronto at this point. So they say anybody who wants to provide tips, just call Toronto Police Service directly. There won't be that confidentiality, they say, of course, but then at least your information will get to investigators. All right, Linda, thanks very much. You're welcome.