The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) says it has locked 800,000 accounts after it found that the login information was available to "unauthorized individuals."
The tax agency says impacted users will be locked out of their accounts as a preventive measure until they create a new user identification and new password. The CRA says the accounts were not compromised because of a breach of the federal agency's online systems.
Instead, the CRA says the login information may have been obtained by unauthorized third parties and through a variety of means by sources external to the CRA, including email phishing schemes.
The statement comes less than a month after the tax agency said an unspecified number of user IDs and passwords may have been accessed by unauthorized individuals. The CRA said in February of this year that thousands of accounts had not been compromised by a cyberattack but were locked as a preventive measure.
