The Asbestos Response Taskforce has admitted breaching the privacy of 28 Mr Fluffy owners during an electronic mailout on Friday, saying it has referred the matter to the Office of the Australian Privacy Commissioner.
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News of the breach broke on social media on Friday afternoon when a Mr Fluffy owners Facebook group member posted that they had received an email containing letters addressed to 58 other people on the latest home demolition list.
The letters contained names, current addresses and the address of the Mr Fluffy property concerned.
Mr Fluffy owners are highly sensitive about their privacy following the previous unlawful circulation of lists of Fluffy properties and, in June last year, a list of the names and addresses of all 1022 affected home owners.
An Asbestos Response Taskforce spokeswoman said only 28 individuals had been affected by the latest breach. It had looked as if more were affected because the PDF letters ran to two pages.
"An error occurred in the electronic distribution of the updated demolition schedule on Friday which resulted in one affected home owner receiving by email 28 other owners' letters," she said.
"As soon as the taskforce was made aware of this it made contact with the recipient and requested they delete the email."
Taskforce members then contacted the 28 individuals affected to explain the breach had occurred and to apologise.
"In addition, the taskforce informed the office of the Privacy Commissioner."
When the news broke on Friday Mr Fluffy owners were not in a forgiving frame of mind.
The recipient of the letters said they had rung the taskforce to complain. "They say sorry. Evidently we are the only ones. Could we just delete the email, a technical glitch."
Felicity Prideaux, a spokesperson for the Mr Fluffy Full Disclosure Group, and a Fluffy owner who had to move to NSW because it was impossible for her to rent a dog-friendly property in Canberra after her ACT home was listed for demolition, said privacy had always been an issue for the affected families.
"I had an instance where Actew AGL refused to come to my property to quote because it was a Mr Fluffy even though, at that stage, the list of homes was highly confidential," she said.
She said the homes involved in the latest privacy breach appeared to be around Turner, Watson, Belconnen, Kaleen and Lyneham.
"People are very much over it. We continually get told that this is a "caring, compassionate response" – but it's not. There is a feeling of "how much worse can this get".
Ms Prideaux said the Mr Fluffy experience had devastated peoples lives, leaving many home owners battling depression and other issues.
"This is not about Mr Fluffy owners whingeing, it is about people who are genuinely hurting because they have lost their homes and not received sufficient financial assistance to transition into equivalent properties. Some people are hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket [after their moves]."
