Some of our members may have received an email this week from FOCA (Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Associations) alerting them of a possible data breach.  Only those SMLCA members who have used FOCA’s online store – to purchase merchandise, register for an event, or pay membership fees – would have been notified.

We have contacted FOCA regarding this notice for clarification and they have indicated that any of our members who did pay for their SMLCA membership using the FOCA online portal would have received this message directly.

FOCA has assured us that no credit card information has been compromised.  FOCA uses a TDBank payment system called “Bambora” and Bambora officials have in turn assured FOCA that they have had no indications of any breaches of their data.  All of Bambora’s transactions are encrypted and secure. You can find out more about Bambora’s high standards, here: https://www.bambora.com/en/ca/certifications-and-compliance/.

That being said, it is unfortunately possible that member names, addresses, phone numbers and emails may have been exposed in the FOCA files, but there is no evidence that they have been copied.  FOCA’s security team think that this attack on their site was a piggy-back attempt to get to another site unrelated to FOCA, to ‘phish’ for PayPal data. Please note that FOCA does not use PayPal for online transactions, and you will never be prompted for PayPal data as a result of using the FOCA online store.

If you have any questions or concerns FOCA would like to hear directly from you.  They may be contacted by phone at 705-749-3622 or email at info@foca.on.ca and they would be happy to give a full explanation.