Thousands of Desjardins members sign petition demanding new SINs

Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition demanding new social insurance numbers in the wake of a massive data breach at Desjardins Group.

This comes after a Desjardins employee with "ill-intention" collected the data of nearly three million people and businesses. He then shared that data with others, officials revealed in late June. 

The leaked information includes names, addresses, birth dates, social insurance numbers, email addresses and information about transaction habits, but no passwords, security questions or personal identification numbers.

Still, people are worried and that worry will last a lifetime if nothing is done because identities can be stolen at any time, said Pierre Langlois.

That's why he launched an online petition calling on the government to issue new SINs to all of those affected. On Sunday morning, the petition was hovering around 50,000 signatures. By Monday morning, that number had jumped to more than 75,000.

"We ask that the government propose a quick solution to this problem, which may include the replacement of the social insurance number of all those who have been victims of this theft, which are known and easily identifiable," the petition says.

Replacing the stolen SINs would be the "least the Canadian government could do to help restore some peace of mind to the victims," it continues. 

The Government of Canada is committed to protecting social insurance numbers against fraud and misuse, as well as protecting the privacy of Canadians, according to a spokesperson for the minister of families, children and social development, Jean-Yves Duclos.

Duclos is not accepting or refusing the petition's request at this point.

"We believe that any security breach affecting SIN information is very serious," wrote the spokesperson in an email to Radio-Canada. "Our government is in communication with the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF) to provide all the necessary support on this file."