Half a million Australian Red Cross blood donors hit by security breach
Sam Hussey - Yahoo7 on October 28, 2016, 12:32 pm
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More than half a million Australian blood donors have had their personal data hacked after a major security breach at Red Cross.
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VIDEO News break - October 28
The organisation said it had been made aware of the breach and was now trying to contact 550,000 blood donors.
Australian Red Cross blood donor chief executive Shelly Park apologised to the blood donors and said she believed all copies of the data had since been deleted.
550,000 blood donors had their personal information accessed when an unauthorised person accessed a Red Cross computer. Photo: AAP
Red Cross donors received a text message on Friday morning alerting them of the breach.
"As an organisation, we are still in the process of completing our investigation and we have engaged forensic experts to help us with this," Ms Park said.
"We apologise and we acknowledge that this is unacceptable."
Ms Park insisted that the online forms, dating between 2010 - 2016, did not share information containing "more sensitive medical information".
It’s believed human error was to blame after a file containing donor information was placed on an insecure computer and then accessed by an unauthorised person.
Ardent Leisure CEO Deborah Thomas yesterday announced that she would give her $167,000 bonus to the Red Cross following Tuesday's disaster at Dreamworld. Photo: AAP
The news comes just one day after the CEO of Ardent Leisure, the parent company of Dreamworld, donated her annual bonus to the Red Cross following the death of four people at the theme park on Tuesday.
Red Cross Australia said they planned to donate Deborah Thomas' $167,000 to those affected by the Dreamworld disaster.