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A MAN WHO is renting in Blackrock, Dublin received a letter to his apartment from Irish Water containing the bank details of the previous tenant.
The man registered with Irish Water on January 5 after moving into his new home and called the utility to ensure it had updated the records for the apartment.
However, last Friday a letter arrived to the property from Irish Water with a different name on it.
As well as the name being mixed up, the letter also contained bank details of the previous tenant, including their BIC, IBAN and full name.
Irish Water insists there was no issue as the banking details of the previous tenant, “addressed to them personally, were sent out to their old address under SEPA rules before we confirmed with the new tenant, that the details of the tenancy had changed and in the absence of the previous tenant telling us they no longer lived at this address”.
In a statement to TheJournal.ie, the utility added, “There is no data protection issue here as the SEPA confirmation letter was addressed to the person who had provided their banking details. The tenant information on our database is now correct following the current tenants call today and the bill will be issued to that tenant.”
When the new tenant called Irish Water to tell them what had happened he says he was kept on the phone for 45 minutes and told that their system was refusing to delete the person’s details and update them to his.
When he asked if it was normal practice to send back bank details, he was told by the woman on the phone that she didn’t know what was sent out and she couldn’t transfer him to someone who knew.
The man got in contact with Sinn Féin’s Lynn Boylan over the weekend. Boylan told TheJournal.ie, “What shocked him most was if this was common practice.
He works in computers and is concerned because he knows how easily these systems can be hacked.
Irish Water says it now has the correct tenant information for the householder currently living at this address thanks to the tenant making contact with them.
There is no data protection issue here as the SEPA confirmation letter was addressed to the person who had provided their banking details.
“The tenant information on our database is now correct following the current tenants call today and the bill will be issued to that tenant.”
It comes after bank details of Irish Water customers were sent to their landlords at the end of last year.
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It just gets better and better scrap Irish Water now Cowboys
When you say Cowboys I’m assuming you mean the government? We would be better off if nobody paid IW and continued paying for water services through taxation.
They’re all being binned/burned anyway…
What a joke of a company, unfortunately my mother paid the bill on the day it arrived. Hopefully most other people take the opposite approach and bin the bills. That’s the advice my landlord gave to me anyway.
Exactly Fintan!
I think we should all take a minute to remember the innocent trees who gave up their lives to become junk mail for IW.
Would love the journal to do a poll for the bin the bill protest tomorrow. Lets see the interest for it .
So essentially this is not a story about Irish Water, it’s a story about someone who broke the law by opening someone else’s mail and in doing so obtained their personal information. Then took this illegally obtained personal information to a TD who was happy to be complicit in this crime.
I’m not Irish Water’s biggest fan but this was my thought too. Why is he opening letters not addressed to him? Bit of a non-issue really.
I am full of outrage
What a shambles iw are. Yet people blindly trust this company. They think its fantastic. Can’t understand why people actually think iw as company will be great. Its a quango. We have proof how bad quangos are with the HSE. We see the government won’t tackle the mismanagement at the HSE. But yet people think iw will be different. Why? Its not as if the man in charge has a good record. He does not. A lot of ex managers from councils are in iw. But yet we are told councils neglected the system. Why does any have faith in iw
My thoughts too Boganity. Whatever about the rights and wrongs of Irish Water, this guy:
1 – opened a private letter addressed to someone else.
2 – then complained about the lack of confidentiality!
?????
The only reason it’s a story is because it involves Irish water and the journal seem to have an agenda of throwing petrol on a fire …
So this man registered with with iw on Jan 5th. And its now 2nd week of April and iw still has not sorted out his details. Have not deleted the previous tenants details. When he rang iw to find out what was going on . iw told him they didn’t know and the lady could not transfer him to someone that did. This is a farce of a quango. If people can’t see this. This they need to go to specsavers.
Basically this guy should be charged, as far as I know, opening someone else’s mail is a crime
His first mistake was registering with IW water!!
Maybe it was opened in error
The usual apologists for FG / Lab. (fg light ), will be on this like a fly on $hite trying to justify the con that Irish Water continues to be !
This fascinates me – as the day to day affairs of this atrocious Company has probably gone beyond a point where anyone can in any way defend it !
A son of a Cork friend of mine is temporarily working in the Call Centre there.
His father told me that his son comes off every shift relating the disasters of the day to him.
He maintains that the whole thing will collapse by the New Year anyway – his son is so seriously stressed out with the problems in the system – which have multiplied twenty fold since these ‘Bills’ went out .
A General Election , will finish it off , no doubt !
Bit of a non-story… I get post addressed to me with my bank details in it and if I don’t update my address when I move then someone else can (illegally I might add), open the post.
As for the dude that did open the post who works with computers and knows ‘…how easily these systems are hacked…’, I would suggest he ups his game a little. Properly secured systems are not easily hacked at all. Maybe his systems are though – who knows.
Delighted I did not register with this shower. Could never trust them with my private information.
Joey the Journal uses IW stories as the Journalist equivalent of a grushie at a wedding
Return to sender that’s what I’m doing…. Burned both registration letters… Ops
I wanted to bin the bill. IW send to my house at the protest. But I haven’t got one yet. I’m feeling very left out.
I think they spent all the money for stamps on consultants and bonus’s.
If the letter wasn’t addressed to him, how did he know that someone else’s bank details were in it? Is it not an offence under postal services act to open someone else’s letters?
Why are IW confirming bank details by mail ?
Because it’s a legal requirement. All DD set up under SEPA must be confirmed
Surely they’d at least omit a lot of the digits and replace them with asterixis?
No,
It needs to be confirmed
http://www.ipso.ie/section/SEPADirectDebit
That’s right. Sure if a bank statement was sent in the same way it would have the same details within it. Is this even a news story! “Man opens someone else’s letter, shock, contains someone else’s details inside!!!!”
Well that sucks. Thanks for the information.
And again, verified facts get red thumbed because it doesn’t suit the whingefest.
Come on Journal, this is cynical clickbaiting, you can do better than this
When I receive a bank statement it only contains four digits from my account number.
I have never received anything in the post containing all my bank details.
Including DD forms.
Thanks for correcting me Brian
This thread of comments gives me hope there’s still some people with brains on this app. And your username, OP, is far too relevant.
There is no danger in giving someone your BIC and IBAN because all they can do is lodge money to it and who’s going to complain about that?
You’d have to be with a pretty shocking bank to let someone withdraw from your account with No ID.
Source: Work in bank.
I know if it was my post this guy interfered with, I would be making a complaint to the gardai. Don’t see that IW did anything wrong here.
So the new tenant opened a letter containing personal information that was addressed to the previous tenant, as stated in the article?
Ok, IW may not have updated their database quickly enough but if they guy works in IT he should realise that the privacy breach was not from IW, but rather him opening another persons mail.
Agreed. No story here
More than 3 months after the new guy registered with IW he got a letter with such sensitive information about the old guy. Big story.
The letter wasn’t sent to the new tenants it was sent to the old one. No story.
Put a stop to this car crash please Enda, although it’s great to watch. More and more leaks of data by Irish water…excuse the pun
What a joke IW is… Don’t pay the bill if you’ve registered, just bin it…
I didn’t receive a bill of demand from IW yet.
I won’t be paying it.
I won’t be contacting them or opening up lines of communication with them now, or in the future.
I already pay for water.
“He works in computers”. I think that’s what my mammy tells everybody, too.
Other than stephen donnelly saying it in the dail are all media outlets ignoring the bigger question. How much does it cost to run irish water per year, staff, vans, insurance, office etc ? How much will come in under tariffs? Is their any money left to fix anything? Now their is talk of irish water moving to a shinny new building on st stephens green? How much extra per year will that cost? There is no money left to fix anything!
The shine new building on st stephens gr is been financed by Dennis O Brien while been built by a company who saddled the taxpayer with a 1.7 billion euro debt. Yeah thats Irish for yeah
Is it not illegal to open mail that is addressed to someone else?
We could make a comedy series about IW.
The comings and goings of IW starring etc.
Firstly he shouldn’t be opening other peoples mail. Secondly so it had back details on there. What’s he going to do with them, make a deposit!?
Use it to set up direct debits with other businesses.
You can only deposit money into an account, card details are a different story. For example a disgruntled tenant that had their landlords bank details can decide to set up a direct debit in months or years to come.
It’s another story about IW to give the public plenty of confidence and shows the millions spent in admin is a complete joke. If IW weren’t sure that the intended recipient was still living there due non compliance then why send them out in the first place, from day one they are just winging it
if the previous tenant has not updated his details how would IW know he wasnt there? What reason would they not have for sending the mandate confirmation?
It’s an Irish quango, if course it’s not going to work.
Useless country.
Useless government lets not get the two confused!
The people of Ireland elected the government
Yes we did John. Based on a manifesto stuffed to the gillies with lies.
Bin the Bill protest Tomorrow, Saturday, at 2pm at the Garden of Rememberance
Journal please stop referring to us as IW’s customers as that implies consent. IW’s victims might be more appropriate.
Jeez, when thejournal.ie have an agenda about something they really don’t let go, to the point of farce.
First abortion, then gay marriage and now Irish Water, they will publish the most pathetic and irrelevant non-stories in order to push a particular cause. Every. Single. Day.
It’s beyond tedious.
I still get bank statements from banks addressed to the previous occupant, this is not the service-providers fault, but that of the customer for not updating their records. There’s nothing to blame IW in this case, and to use it as a means to get another dig in is cheap and pathetic.
Thejournal.ie reads like The Socialist Worker sometimes.
It’s called click bait… In fairness media is a business like any other, they are giving their audience what they want and pursuing advertising revenues.
@Brien Lenehan,
Brian ever heard of Hugh O’Connell?, he alone is enough to put to bed any thoughts that the journal has a socialist bias, quite the opposite actually.
Aaron McKenna leans towards the centre right side too… And both of them actually write most their contributions. Not just copy and paste them from elsewhere on the Internet.
A company with the Government behind it, both incompetent and a joke.
DON’T PAY!
Absolute farce, couldn’t organize a piss up at a reservoir
Can illegally open other people’s post and call up the SF rep though right?
I suppose SF have always had a fairly liberal interpretation of the law
Justanother – You FG/Lab. Trolls are really scraping the pot nowadays , aren’t you ?
How can you guys keep defending the indefensible in this Irish Water total debacle ?
Don’t you know it’s going to destroy the prospects of this Government ?
Roll on The General Election ASAP !
Getting pretty bored with all this ‘Irish water sent a bill to someone and wrote “their” instead of “they’re”‘ hysterical articles. Its a new company created basically overnight to setup a metering system for a country of 4.5 million people. $hit happens and while I don’t believe they’ve done a great job jumping on every single mistake is just nonsense.
This really is a non/ issue
Why did he open a letter that wasn’t addressed to him? Return to sender…
Can u be a called an IW customer if its forced upon you ??..a customer i thought has options..just enquiring people.
You do have options. Install a water-trap and filtering system from the down-pipe of the roof for drinking-water and a septic-tank for your effluent. Live off-grid if you wish.
But if you use a service that Irish Water is providing, then you are, by definition, a customer.
Simples.
A customer is by definition ‘one who purchases commodities or services’ And ‘to purchase’ is to acquire something by means of payment.
So you’re right and wrong my friend… You’re not a customer but it’s an implied covenant that you will be when you pay or are forced to pay your bills.
So now nobody can make a mistake, people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
I’ve defended Irish Water for mistakes in the past, but having a system that involved posting your complete bank details back to you makes no sense whatsover, unless it was almost all asterixes.
Teething errors associated with setting up a new system.
All sepa details must be confirmed by post. It’s a legal requirement.
Sky, Eircom, Bord Gais all post my bank details to me. They are required to confirm the DD by law.
IW is full of mistakes…
Not paying.
Irish water ran by donkeys to support white collar gangsters
Breaking news .. Same man now found checking other people’s mailboxes for post and going on a post opening rampage. Seriously what a joke of an article. This happens loads every single day from many different service providers .. But because it’s a case when iw did it, it needs to be news?
I hope Lynn asked the guy to join the boycott and don’t pay
I will go to my grave thinking that the two parties that entered into government under Enda Kenny were nothing ever but complete traitors to the people they were supposed to be working for.
NOTHING they can ever do now or in the future, is every going to change my opinion. The only place their pictures should hang is in a national rouges gallery I would build brick by brick if it was possible.
Only in Ireland would you get people blaming the tenant in this case. There are some wallopers out there.
So you regularly open letters that are not addressed to you?
How did Irish Water actually GET the persons bank details? Its one thing to bully data from the people via a sick government of FG and Labour – it’s another thing to get bank details from a legal separate institution. The information that the two parties has given away to this money stealing scam is disgusting.
.
Every member of Fine Gael and Labour that continues to stand by the party, I consider to be presently the lowest of the low in this country. They are despicable, they are to be further despised and they are to be further shunned. They are traitors to the people if Ireland. They at national and local level should hand their heads in shame and ask for a nations forgiveness – never mind our vote!
I take it you didn’t register J.Rudd? If you had, you may have spotted the section on the form where you decide how to pay, and provide bank details if doing so by DD. You may have noticed a similar section on your electricity bill, or gas bill, or telephone bill or … well… you get the idea.
Actually – scratch that. Let’s stick with the notion that FG and Lab not only have your bank details, but gave them away. Paranoid much?
No – not paranoid. Actually I am highly qualified in I.T.
Many years ago (I am being careful with details for legal reasons) I was asked to repair a government I.T. system. I did so.
In order to test the national network system, I asked could I run a process through it to see all was ok?
To do this, I had to have someone additionally watch myself, over my shoulder, what I was doing to make sure I didn’t go too far given my then brief given limited security access. To test the system anyway, I entered in my fathers car registration number of the time and only that alone.
The amount of information I could THEN access was staggering – and bloody scary.
Many years later – remember that every six months I.T. jumps further serious leaps – given the government can input further open data given to them via forms alone and I still working that field, I have NO doubt whatsoever that if a state want info, they can by front door or alternative back door network route, access it. I have no doubt whatsoever. The network inter-departmental connections exist in regard to data transfer in a micro-second. Those networks also extenuate outward to services and business that most people don’t even know that exist – never mind knowledge of ability of connectivity.
If the people of Ireland really know what is going on – and what can really be done by someone in a high up department, would scare the crap out of them. It scared the crap out of me many years ago and much more has changed since then in technology, access, speed and CPU power to boot! The people of Ireland are only allowed see a tip of a technology iceberg that’s quietly behind them, being maintained and recording data on everything.
Opened someone else’s mail then contacted an MEP, yes an MEP, about it. And a SHINNER MEP at that. I wonder who leaked this utter non story. The Journal – becoming more tabloid by the day.
No other utility gets a story like this. I am sure it happens with the ESB and gas companies as well.
Ridiculous non story, maybe tomorrow we will have a ” man thinks esb bill is a bit high headline”.
If you have ever written a cheque in your life, you have revealed your name, you bank’s sort code and your account number.
30 secs online can covert that to IBAN.
So other than the obvious agenda behind this story, how is this news?
Did he open a letter addressed to somebody else?
Hang on a second. If you set up a direct debit it’s common for the company to confirm the details by return, Irish water are spot on here – there is no data protection issue. The main issue is the previous tenant didn’t update them with his new address, something everyone needs to do when moving house.
Also it’s 2015, the phrase ‘he works in computers’ is now a little outdated.
Besides law enforcement agencies, who in their right mind would contact a Shinner about anything? I smell a rat.
No, that is just your dinner you smell? lol.
Doh ! Better get Ms Arnett to explain this one away. I’m sure she has a spin to cover all such eventualities.
So IW could end up taking money from people for previous places they were in, is that not illegal?
have your say