ARTICLE · 05 FEBRUARY 2013

Retention Of Address Book Information In Hashed Form Still Criticized By Canada And Netherlands

Dentons Canada LLP

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada announced the results of an investigation into a mobile messaging platform that allows users to send and receive instant messages over the Internet.

CanadaPrivacy

Timothy Banks

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The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC) announced the results of an investigation into a mobile messaging platform that allows users to send and receive instant messages over the Internet. The OPC coordinated its investigation with the Dutch Data Protection Authority (DPA). Commissioner Stoddart has previously stated that coordinated enforcement is a priority of the OPC.

The OPC found that the mobile app was not compliant with the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (Canada) in respect of how it handles address book information. Once a user consents to the app using the user's address book information, telephone numbers are uploaded to the providers' servers using SSL/TLS encryption. This may occur up to two times a day or when a manually refreshes. Telephone numbers that are correlated to other users are retained in clear text by the provider. These are "in network" numbers to which instant messages could be sent. Telephone

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Retention Of Address Book Information In Hashed Form Still Criticized By Canada And Netherlands

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