Data breaches → Fair Vote Canada
Was your data in the Fair Vote Canada breach?
2024 · fairvote.ca · ~134,336 accounts exposedCritical severity · 9/10
Fair Vote Canada (fairvote.ca) suffered a data breach in 2024 that exposed around 134,336 accounts. If you had an account, some of your personal data may be circulating in leaked databases. The fastest way to know is to check your own email — free, in about 30 seconds, no password required.
What happened
In March 2024, the Canadian national citizens' campaign for proportional representation Fair Vote Canada suffered a data breach. The incident was attributed to "a well-meaning volunteer" who inadvertently exposed data from 2020 which included 134k unique email addresses, names, physical addresses, phone numbers and, for some individuals, date and amount of a donation.
Breach details sourced from Have I Been Pwned, the industry-standard breach database. Risk analysis by Nullivo.
What was exposed, and why it matters
Not all breaches carry the same risk — what matters is which fields leaked. Here is what the Fair Vote Canada breach exposed and what each item actually enables:
Special-category data under UK/EU GDPR. Exposure can lead to discrimination, extortion or targeted harassment, and cannot be undone.
Home addresses feed people-search and data-broker sites, which republish them publicly. They also make phishing far more convincing and, in the worst cases, enable real-world harassment.
Enables SIM-swap attacks (hijacking your number to intercept SMS codes), smishing, and voice scams that appear to come from your bank.
Links this leak to your other accounts — a reused username lets anyone build a profile of you across platforms.
Puts you on spam and phishing lists, and confirms to attackers that you hold an account with this service — which makes impersonation emails more believable.
What to do if you were affected
These steps are ordered for this specific breach — the most urgent action given what leaked comes first.
- Sensitive personal characteristics: Under UK/EU GDPR you have a strong right to erasure here — exercise it with the service and with any site republishing the data.
- Home addresses: Get your address removed from data brokers — they re-list roughly every four months, so this needs repeating.
- Phone numbers: Move two-factor authentication off SMS to an authenticator app or passkey, and add a port-out PIN with your mobile provider.
- Names and usernames: Search your usual username to see what else it exposes, and use distinct handles for sensitive accounts.
- Email addresses: Treat any message referencing this service with suspicion, and never act on links in unexpected emails.
- Check whether your own email appears in this breach — run a free scan to confirm before you spend time on the steps above.
This breach put your details on data-broker sites
Because Fair Vote Canada exposed sensitive personal characteristics and home addresses, this is one of the breaches that feeds people-search and data-broker sites. Those sites scrape leaked databases, combine them with public records, and republish the result as a searchable profile — which is how a single breach turns into a permanent public listing. Removal works, but brokers typically re-list within about four months, so it has to be repeated.
See our broker-by-broker removal guides →
How urgent is this now?
This data has been circulating for around 2 years, which means it has been copied, combined with other leaks and indexed by search tools many times over.
Remember: a breach can't be "un-leaked" — once a database is out, it exists in countless copies. The goal is to make the leaked data useless: change what can be changed, lock down what can't, and remove what has been republished.
Frequently asked questions
What data was exposed in the Fair Vote Canada breach?
The Fair Vote Canada breach exposed sensitive personal characteristics, home addresses, phone numbers, names and usernames, email addresses. Special-category data under UK/EU GDPR. Exposure can lead to discrimination, extortion or targeted harassment, and cannot be undone.
How many people were affected by the Fair Vote Canada breach?
Around 134,336 accounts were exposed, making it a mid-sized breach.
What should I do if I had a Fair Vote Canada account?
Under UK/EU GDPR you have a strong right to erasure here — exercise it with the service and with any site republishing the data. You can check whether your own email appears in this breach with a free Nullivo scan — no password required.
Breaches that exposed similar data
If the Fair Vote Canada breach affected you, these breaches exposed comparable information — worth checking too, since leaked datasets are routinely combined.
- Was your data in the pcTattletale breach? (2024, ~138,751 accounts)
- Was your data in the Tappware breach? (2024, ~94,734 accounts)
- Was your data in the T2 breach? (2024, ~94,584 accounts)
- Was your data in the Tangerine breach? (2024, ~243,462 accounts)
- Was your data in the MSI breach? (2024, ~249,990 accounts)
- Was your data in the Finsure breach? (2024, ~296,124 accounts)