Owner of Region’s ‘My Waste’ app hacked, 3,000 local email addresses accessed

By cceolin

The region’s My Waste app has been hacked, compromising the email addresses of 3,000 local users.

The app is owned by Recycle Coach, which notified the region on Tuesday that a subscriber database had been accessed.

If you opted to receive marketing emails from Recycle Coach, then your email has been sold to spammers.

However, the My Waste app itself was not compromised — so names, addresses, passwords and any other identifying information stored on the garbage-tracking app is not vulnerable to the hackers.

“While it is unfortunate and we wish that it didn’t happen, the good news is it is only email addresses with no personal information associated with it,” says Cari Howard, the region’s waste management program manager.

The region is now working with Recycle Coach so they can beef up security.

“We want to maintain a certain level of trust for our residents,” says Howard. “We understand that this is a service we’re offering our residents … If we have ongoing concerns around security with Recycle Coach and the My Waste app moving forward, we might look at a different platform.”

If your email was affected, you would have been contacted by both Recycle Coach and the Region of Waterloo.

The only impact you will see is the potential for additional spam emails, says Howard.

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