Your Privacy is at Risk with Canada Revenue Agency

Is your privacy is at risk with CRA?

It depends. CRA has the most confidential personal and financial information about you, sometime even your spouse does not know. With proper authentication these information can be obtained by anyone in the CRA or outside of the CRA. You always risk your privacy, trying to save money by doing your annual income tax return with one of those mushrooms like tax service provider that pops up during tax time. If they have an alternative agenda, your personal information is more valuable to them than your tax service fees.

CRA employees have been accused of accessing unauthorized taxpayer information by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPCC).

Canada’s privacy watchdog Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPCC) Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart in her annual report stated that Canadians complaints over privacy concerns have reached a record-high in 2012.

She said much of the complaints increase was generated by two highly publicized data breaches involving Employment and Social Development Canada, and Justice Canada.

The number of data breaches reported by federal agencies was up 36 per cent, rising from 80 to 109 over a one-year period.

“Canadians deserve to have their personal information protected, particularly when they provide it to the government under legal compulsion,” Stoddart said in a news release.

A major part of her Privacy Report expressed concern about privacy breach by the Canada Revenue Agency.

Privacy Commissioner performed an Audit of Canada Revenue Agency after several reports of Privacy breaches involving CRA employees accessing the personal information of thousands of taxpayers, without proper authorization and went without detection.

Her office made 13 recommendations to the CRA, which include changes to privacy breach reporting, monitoring of employee access rights and threat and risk assessments for IT systems.

“CRA collects and retains the most sensitive, personal, financial data of Canadians. By meeting our recommendations, the Agency can move forward in maintaining Canadians’ confidence in the tax system,” Stoddart said.

CRA has agreed to the recommendations and the privacy office says it will follow-up with the agency within two years to ensure the changes have been implemented.