Victorian Game Management Authority leaks data of 60,000 customers, blames human error

Something seems amiss in Australia, judging by the growing number of institutions that have accidentally leaked customer databases. Victorian Game Management Authority joins the list after carelessly leaking its customers” personal data.

Due to human error, the information was emailed to eight clients who were renewing their hunting licenses, according to the Department of Environment Land Water and Planning. The institution contacted them and says the data was either deleted or not even received as the file was very large.

Looking into other incidents, the affected institutions tend to blame human error, as was the case for the National Australia Bank. In December, the institution mistakenly emailed the private information of 60,000 customers to an address on the domain “nab.com,” instead of “nab.com.au.” The data included names, addresses, emails, branch, accounts number and, in some cases, identification numbers.

In the UK, 175 out of the 335 data breaches that took place between April and June 2016 were a result of “data being “disclosed in error” by human action,” reported the Information Commissioner”s Office.

Human error takes the most blame for data breaches, although it is much easier to resolve than targeted hacker attacks. The most common human errors include sending emails to wrong or misspelled email addresses, revealing confidential information by mistake in a large thread and mishandling hardware, among others.