The Globe and Mail is reporting that an Ontario man was able to uncover personal information about other passport applicants when he was creating his own Canadian Passport request online. The hack occurred with a simple change of a few characters in the site URL, "I was expecting the site to tell me that I couldn't do that," said Jamie Laning of Huntsville. "I'm just curious about these things so I tried it, and boom, there was somebody else's name and somebody else's data." Mr. Laning is apparently an IT worker and immediately informed the Passport Office or his discovery. The site was taken down and apparently fixed, however when it came back up yesterday The Globe and Mail was able to view at least some data of other applicants including "names, addresses and numbers for references and emergency contacts." Glad I renewed by mail!
