Grassroots leaders' e-mail addresses mistakenly revealed
PA's Nacli apologises after e-mail addresses of 1,300 leaders were visible in mass e-mail
The personal e-mail addresses of 1,300 grassroots leaders were accidentally released on Monday by the community leadership development arm of the People's Association (PA).
The National Community Leadership Institute (Nacli) sent a mass e-mail to the grassroots leaders, informing them of the closure of its East Coast Campus from Sept 1. However, an administrative mistake meant that all the recipients' e-mail addresses were visible.
This is the second such incident here this week, following a similar gaffe by an SMRT-backed start-up, reported by The Straits Times (ST) on Monday.
In response to queries from ST, a PA spokesman said it has standard operating procedures in line with government guidelines on using "bcc" when sending mass e-mails to the public.
The bcc function lets recipients view a sent e-mail without being identified.
In this instance, a staff member accidentally used the "cc" function instead of the bcc function, the spokesman said.
"We are looking into the matter. We have also reminded all staff to strictly adhere to the guidelines."
Nacli, which was set up to train community leaders, sent an e-mail on Tuesday evening, seen by ST, to explain and apologise for the lapse to those affected.
"We sincerely apologise for the oversight and endeavour to tighten our internal processes to ensure that such an error will not happen again," it said in the e-mail.
Nacli also said in the e-mail that unread e-mails were immediately recalled, as soon as it found out about the oversight.
Data protection law expert Hannah Yeefen Lim from Nanyang Technological University's Nanyang Business School said: "The Personal Data Protection Act applies only to the private sector and does not apply to the public sector."
On Monday, ST reported that start-up mobilityX sent a mass e-mail last Friday to users of a smartphone app it had created, to introduce a feature, when it included all its users' e-mail addresses in the "to" address field.
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