CBC Found a Tipster’s Full Name in Leaked Crime Stoppers Data
In the winter of 2025, Andrew Rivard spotted a Crime Stoppers ad offering a $2,000 reward for tips and reported what he knew about illegal cigarette sales in his neighbourhood. His original tip, as it appeared in the leaked data, included his full name.
The data was stolen last March by the hacktivist collective Internet Yiff Machine. CBC’s interviews and analysis of Canadian content in the leaked data suggest that Crime Stoppers and the company it contracted to manage its database failed to protect tipsters’ identities, left personal information unredacted, and improperly retained decades of sensitive records.
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Anonymity is the whole offer here: Crime Stoppers is a network of civilian-run non-profits that collects anonymous tips, and it asks the public for help with unsolved crimes in partnership with police under a promise that the tipster stays unnamed. Damage that promise and the group is not repairing a database so much as its reason for existing.
The stated target was narrower than the harm. The manifesto said the group wanted to disprove the claim by P3 Global Intel, the company hired to manage the tips, that the platform was ‘anonymous’ and ‘secure’ — and the score is settled, in the leaked files, with a tipster’s full name attached.