Cornwall Council shared parents' email addresses by mistake

One mother, who did not wish to be named, said she had "no faith in the council" following the data breach

A council has sent an apology to 155 parents of disabled children after it revealed their private email addresses.

An email from Cornwall Council offering a new "max card" scheme was sent to parents whose children were registered as disabled.

Rather than BCC-ing the recipients, everyone's email address was displayed.

The council tried to recall the email before sending a third as an apology. It said it had also reviewed what happened to avoid repeating the error.

One mother, who did not wish to be named said she had "no faith in the council" following the data breach.

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The Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) said parents were unhappy and had urged the council to improve its systems to avoid a repeat incident following the issue earlier in September.

Blind carbon copy (Bcc) allows the sender to enter email addresses to the intended recipients without any of the recipients being able to see each other's names or email addresses.

The mother said: "I didn't think anything of it at first, but almost immediately I had another email saying they wanted to recall the original message.

"I then had the third email saying that the email had been sent contrary to data protection regulations.

"I rarely get emails from the council but when this kind of thing happens it makes me reluctant to give them my information."

Another mother, who also did not want to be named, said she was mistrustful of the council.

She said: "You expect them to keep your personal information confidential and not share it with others.

"For myself, I am not going to do anything untoward with those email addresses, but you don't know what others might do?

"It also makes you question that if they can do this, what else might they be doing with your information."

Cornwall Council said: "The message was immediately recalled and an apology was sent out. We have reviewed what happened to make sure it doesn't happen again."