[Editor’s note: This article originally appeared on the Le Monde Informatique website.]
More than 10,000 beneficiaries of a local branch of the French social security agency CAF, or Family Allowance Fund, saw their data exposed for about 18 months, after a file containing personal information was sent to a service provider.
The mistake, discovered by France Info — Radio France’s news and investigation service — just before the year-end holidays, could hit the CAF hard. The investigation found that the CAF in Gironde (Nouvelle-Aquitaine) sent a file containing sensitive and personal information of 10,204 beneficiaries to a service provider responsible for training the organization’s statisticians.
