Durham District School Board accidentally emails out names of 800 unvaccinated staffers

The Durham District School Board (DDSB) accidentally revealed names of staffers who are unvaccinated against COVID-19 or refuse to reveal their vaccination status.

In a statement emailed to Daily Hive on Thursday, the DDSB said that on January 5, they had “inadvertently attached” a spreadsheet containing approximately 800 staffers’ names to a routine mass email about rapid test compliance.

The email was sent to 399 DDSB employees.

“Once we realized this, we took action to delete all of the emails from the recipients’ inboxes,” DDSB said. “This incident should not have happened, and we have notified, apologized to and followed up with the approximately 800 employees that were impacted.”

You might also like:
• Ontario reports 3,220 COVID-19 hospitalizations, record-breaking ICU numbers on Tuesday
• "This is what freedom looks like": Enforcement possible after Ont. vaccine protester party (VIDEO)

The board also said they sincerely regret the incident and “take [their] responsibility to protect the personal information of all employees very seriously.”

“The DDSB is committed to doing everything possible to ensure that a similar incident does not occur in the future. We have discussed this incident to ensure there is a clear understanding of the critical importance of verifying that emails do not contain attachments of this nature and of the need to protect this type of information,” they added.

Furthermore, the DDSB will be providing additional training for all staff involved with secure documents, as well as reviewing DDSB practices related to handling sensitive information, “including the consideration of additional security measures for spreadsheets and/or documents of this nature.”

At the time of publishing, the DDSB has not posted a statement on their official Twitter account or website.