The Australian Human Rights Commission has been affected by a data breach concerning attachments uploaded to the Commission's web forms on its website.
The Commission's best information is that around 670 documents were made potentially accessible in error. Of these, around 100 documents were accessed online, for example by search engines such as Google or Bing. The Commission acted to address the breach as soon as it came to our attention.
The Commission takes the issue of privacy and data protection very seriously. It is critical that people are able to securely share personal and sensitive information with the Commission via our website. We sincerely apologise to people who may be affected. The Commission is contacting affected individuals for whom we have contact information to advise them of the breach.
We are working as hard as we can to fully investigate and address the breach. The Commission has reported the unauthorised disclosure of personal information to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
