Contact/Lifeline Data Breach (2012)

The collapse of a stack of storage boxes was the incident that triggered a serious data breach at a crisis helpline provider in Londonderry, an investigation has found. Confidential file notes on clients who had rung the Lifeline service were discovered blowing around outside the offices of charity organisation Contact in the city this summer. Names of people who had called for counselling were visible on some of the documents, which were found strewn on roads and pavements and even floating in the River Foyle. Contact operates Lifeline on behalf of the Public Health Agency. The external investigation found that the storage stack collapsed and fell against - and consequently opened - an emergency door in Contact's sixth-floor office in the Embassy building in the early hours of Sunday July 22.