Some Montreal-area teachers are concerned about their personal information being compromised after recently receiving a letter from Quebec's education ministry telling them how to protect themselves from a data breach that was revealed five months ago. One of them reached out to yourstory@cjad.com.
"Incompetency, angry, irate."
That's how this teacher said he felt reading the letter saying he was among the over 51-thousand affected so far. He has since left the profession but said he never heard from the education ministry at the time of the data breach. He said he only heard something briefly about it in the news.
"I thought, How did this happen, how could this happen? It's the government. It's not Walmart or a private business entity or even social media - it's the government," said the teacher, who asked not to be named.
"Why were teachers not informed from the ministry?"
The ministry told CJAD 800 it sent out a press release last February. It said at the time as many as 360,000 teachers may be affected and that a database with personal information was accessed after a username and password was discovered. It didn't explain why they're only now sending these letters that offer an apology and free credit monitoring for five years from Equifax.
"So do I feel safer? No. I think it's a temporary fix. It's, in a lot of ways, what the government does - I find they pacify, they give you a false sense of safety but no, more has to be done," said the teacher.
"You don't know if criminals are sitting on the list, if they're waiting, if they're letting time pass - once they have your info, they can use it at any time."
The education ministry has also updated its website with the information. Four hundred teachers so far have filed a complaint about identity theft following the information leak. The SQ is still investigating.