Oh look, the cops leaked the full details of every single crime stoppers tip they got last year, including personal information on the tipster.
Edit: Not just last year, in the full 25 years they've been running this program!
Of course it's an external vendor. What could go wrong with outsourcing systems like this?
People are going to die because of this criminal negligence.
The fact that the information architecture was not designed to:
a) remove identifying information from the body of the tip, and
b) store identity as a separate database with locked down...
That's deep, deep negligence in program design.
"[The hackers] added that the security measures of P3, which was storing Crime Stoppers' tips, were "terrible" and that the platform is still vulnerable."
It's really saying something when the hackers are more responsible than the vendor. They have not yet leaked the contents of the hack except to journalists.
The thing that bothers me the most about this is that P3 (the company) knows that they've been hacked, and their systems are still up and vulnerable for other hackers.
The only correct response is to take down your system to remediate your vulnerabilities. Especially with data that's this sensitive.
Oh I missed this part. They kept **all the historical data**?!?!?! Over 25 years?!
Oct 21, 2026, 1:55 PM“Crime Stoppers” is just a company, right? Should we be surprised that their unregulated IT practices are weak?
(I’m not sea lioning, more like “wryly asking as an opportunity to share some witty trashing of these bozos.”)
@Benhm3 Crimestoppers is a Canadian police program (public). They contracted a private company to process all their tips.
Edit: it's not. See reply from Jerome below.
@mayintoronto @Benhm3 im
Not familiar with the org but CBC says they are registered with the CRA as non profit and: Crime Stoppers is a network of civilian-run non-profits that collects anonymous tips on crime and suspicious activity. It operates independently of law enforcement, though it refers a portion of tips back to them to assist in investigations
I saw their signs before. Thought it was a police service but looks somewhat independent
Oct 21, 2026, 5:27 PMThere's a US corp that controls the worldwide corp, that has in-country corps. (I am NOT an MBA.) All non-profit, but someone's benefiting. That they get apparently licensed cops to do sales is, well, hat's off to them.
But I propose we put them in the "scum of the earth" category, pending eventual admission to the "Outright Villains" group.
@mayintoronto @jerome @Benhm3 My immediate cynical take is that it's intentionally *not* a police service, so that it is not subject to their necessary level of oversight.
Oct 21, 2026, 3:50 PM@mayintoronto the amount of ever increasing "ho-ly Hell" I gasped just while reading your thread makes me feel reading the article. I might not survive.
Oct 21, 2026, 3:52 PM@mayintoronto okay, I'm glad I clicked, cause "Internet Yiff Machine" sent me 😅
@mayintoronto While not as bad as exposing crime tips... to volunteer at TDSB schools, one has to get a "vulnerable sector check". To do that, you upload a picture of two pieces of ID to a service run by some company in Richmond Hill, and then I assume get the results off their server once done. I am taking absolutely no bets on their security arrangements.
@jarek @mayintoronto Vulnerable Sector checks are done by police. Sounds like another private company inserting themselves in the process to skim off profit.
@ZenHeathen @mayintoronto yes, done by the police, using services of a private company
https://www.tps.ca/services/police-record-checks/
https://www.tdsb.on.ca/Community/How-to-Get-Involved/Volunteering
@ZenHeathen @jarek Toronto cops outsourced their background checks many years ago.
@mayintoronto @jarek What?!? How can they just give someone else access to that data?! And it's not just *their* data, it's from every force.
What the absolute hell. That shit ought to be illegal.
ACAB. They take all the money, and we can't trust them to protect us even at the most basic levels.
@mayintoronto Not just Crime Stoppers and not just Canada. Their whole tipline database was exfiltrated in March - every tip ever submitted - via Crime Stoppers, U.S. State Attorneys General, Sandy Hook Promise, and many more.
@douglevin Jeeeeeeez.
this is wrong on so many levels.
Oct 21, 2026, 3:28 PM@mayintoronto so many of these vendors have poor data security practices. Like keeping everything in an excel sheet kind of bad
Oct 21, 2026, 3:29 PM@mayintoronto and using passwords like “hunter1” with no 2FA
@b It's hunter2, b!!!
Oct 21, 2026, 3:31 PM@mayintoronto *hacks intensely*
@mayintoronto @b not since the update, now it’s Hunter2!
@b I expect that from a community group, not.... you know. Can you imagine how much money they spend on this program every year?!?!
@mayintoronto A friend in law enforcement once joke when getting informants they'd say, "Snitches get Riches!"
Not, "Snitches get Compromised Identity Switches".
"We used Google’s Gemini AI to help us draft, troubleshoot and optimize computer programming scripts in Python and SQLite to structure and systemically analyze a dataset too massive to process manually... "
...
"We may have also used Google's Gemini to draft this legal argument b/c the po-po are going to come at us hard!"
@mayintoronto Canadian police: helping snitches get stitches since (at least) 1867.
Good reason, ethically, to allow tippers to remain anonymous.
I don't suppose the cops are investigating this case of criminal negligence?
@EricLawton Oh definitely not.
Oct 21, 2026, 7:22 PM@mayintoronto "the public sector is incompetent" is such a cult.
@emma It's more like the public sector is hyper efficient, except the consultants they bring in to cover up the decisions.
Looking at you, Deloitte.
@mayintoronto wow, that’s horrendous.
Oct 21, 2026, 9:53 PM@mayintoronto For fuck sakes. :flan_facepalm:
