Canadian Crime Stoppers Hack Exposes 1.5 Million Tips Spanning 25 Years

A major hack has exposed more than 1.5 million tips sent to Canadian Crime Stoppers programs. The tips piled up over 25 years. Many people trusted the service to keep their names secret. That trust now faces serious strain.

An investigation published on October 21, 2026 found more than 850,000 leaked records with personal details. In over 4,300 reports, tipsters typed their full names. The service promises anonymity, so this finding worries many people. Tipsters now wonder how safe they really are. The leak also came with a short delay. Hackers took the data months before the public learned how big the problem was.

Tipsters’ Names and Details Sit in the Leaked Files

The investigators studied a copy of the leaked data. Some records held details that could point to the people who sent tips. Other records named people mentioned inside the reports. This makes it hard to tell who faces danger in each case. Some people sent tips. Others only appear in them. Both groups could now feel the effects of the leak.

Andrew Rivard of Manitoba is one affected tipster. He reported suspected illegal cigarette sales after he saw an ad offering a $2,000 reward. His first message included his full name. According to the investigation, Rivard had trusted Crime Stoppers to guard his identity. He now fears that criminals could use his home address or phone number to hit back at him.

The findings shake a common belief. Many people assume an anonymous service keeps their details private. Crime Stoppers tells users not to include their names. Still, the investigators found some tips with identifying details. In hundreds of cases, internal notes reportedly warned that tipsters had named themselves or had been exposed. Yet the information stayed in the database. The warnings did not lead to its removal.

The leaked data covers about 25 years of records. It holds more than 1.5 million Canadian tips. Not every record contains personal information. The team also could not confirm that every name belonged to a real person.

Hacktivist Group Claims Attack on P3 Global Intel

The breach involved P3 Global Intel, a platform that manages tips. Navigate360, a safety company based in the US, owns it. Hackers reportedly stole the data in March 2026. The full size of the leak became public only months later.

A hacktivist group called Internet Yiff Machine claimed the March attack. A hacktivist group hacks systems to push a cause. According to the group’s manifesto, it wanted to challenge P3’s claims that its platform was anonymous and secure. A manifesto is a public statement of a group’s goals.

Reports from March say the group claimed to have stolen 93 gigabytes of data. That data allegedly held more than eight million confidential tips. A gigabyte measures how much data a file holds. The reports could not check these claims on their own at the time. Navigate360 said it was looking into the incident with outside help.

This difference matters. The wider breach reportedly covered data from many platform users. The October investigation counted only the Canadian Crime Stoppers records it examined.

Distributed Denial of Secrets shared the leaked material with journalists and researchers. This US nonprofit archives leaked documents that it sees as serving the public interest. The investigators said they used encryption, which scrambles files so only approved people can read them. They also worked in an isolated, offline setup. That kept the sensitive files safe during their work.

Toronto Pauses Tips as Police Limit Their Use

The findings sparked a fast response. It came on the same day the investigation went public. Toronto Crime Stoppers announced on October 21 that it was pausing its tip service.

According to a news report, Navigate360 said the breach affected 176,859 Toronto tips. People sent them between January 2022 and November 2025. The company also gave a list of 14,973 names. Toronto Crime Stoppers said it could not tell whose names those were. They could belong to tipsters, suspects, or other people in the reports.

Toronto police later suspended their use of the program. They will first review the risks and proposed security steps. Peel Regional Police and other police services also announced pauses or limits on their use of Crime Stoppers. These moves followed the findings of the investigation. Police in both cities acted soon after the leak became public.

Crime Stoppers has also offered rewards to encourage people to share information about cybercrime, including a $22,000 reward for information on the INC ransomware gang.

As of October 23, 2026, the full impact on affected people remains unclear. Nobody has shown yet how many of the listed names are tipsters. The incident shows the risk of storing sensitive tip records for decades. It also shows why groups should check the security claims of outside service providers.

For people who rely on anonymous reporting, the harm goes beyond stolen data. It threatens the trust that helps witnesses share information without fear of revenge.