Photo: RNZ / Nate McKinnon
The email addresses of more than a thousand Kāinga Ora tenants were mistakenly shared in a group email sent by the agency.
Kāinga Ora's regional director for Auckland North and West, Taina Jones, said in a statement that they were aware of an error that occurred on Monday.
"The email addresses of more than 1000 customers were mistakenly shared in a group email.
"No other personal information or data was released," she said.
Jones said they took incidents like this very seriously and had rigorous processes in place to protect customer information.
"We have notified the Office of the Privacy Commissioner about the incident and are contacting those who received the email to apologise for any disruption this error may have caused," she said.
A west Auckland tenant, who didn't want to be named due to privacy concerns, said the email from Kāinga Ora asked how they wanted to receive future correspondence - by mail or by email.
They said after they replied to Kāinga Ora, they've been continuously receiving responses from other tenants who'd been copied in the same email.
"You can see the numbers, the emails, their replies as well, and also [them] asking for homes and that, you know, people that have had issues with them, that are talking personally about their stuff," the person said.
The tenant said they were concerned that everyone's private information and affairs was being exposed, and inboxes were getting clogged.
"People's email boxes are being filled up in blocks, so we can't actually receive our normal everyday emails that we need to for pay our bills or whatever," the tenant said.
Their Kāinga Ora case manager contacted them on Tuesday to apologise.
The tenant said they were told by the case manager that Kainga Ora was trying to stop people from replying to that email chain by making changes from within the system.
Kāinga Ora has been approached for further comment.
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