Cheshire West and Chester Council sorry for email addresses leak

A council has apologised after more than 1,300 private email addresses were accidentally shared.

A Cheshire West and Chester Council staff member sent out an email on Friday about taxi legislation but failed to use the blind copy function (BCC) to mask all recipients' details.

Some of the emails had been "misused" but it was not believed the incident "posed any significant risks to individuals", the council said.

No other personal data was involved.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said the email, which exposed both personal and business addresses, was sent to 1,326 people advising them of changes to taxi legislation.

The council sent out another email apologising to those affected which said: "We are aware that a proportion of the email addresses have been misused by one of the recipients in that they have been used to contact individuals about an unrelated matter.

"As a result of this, that individual would be considered in breach of their own data protection responsibilities not to use data they should not have had access to, and as a result we have taken additional steps to address the issue."

The email went on to apologise for any "concern or inconvenience" caused.

The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the public body which oversees data privacy, had been informed about the incident but had decided not to take any further action, the local authority said.

A spokesman added: "We reassured them staff have previously received data protection training, and explained the steps we are taking to prevent it happening again in the future."

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