An alleged data breach within the Isle of Man Government’s Freedom of Information (FOI) system has raised serious concerns over the protection of personal data and the privacy of individuals submitting requests.

In response to the issue, the government has taken its FOI request responses offline and is ‘investigating issues that have recently been highlighted’.

According to a report by Manx Radio, the platform’s current search function allows members of the public to retrieve FOI requests linked to specific individuals, organisations, or addresses.

The publicly funded broadcaster claims that the FOI system’s ‘keywords’ search tool can reveal who submitted particular requests, with searches by postcode allegedly returning all FOIs associated with that location.

Manx Radio reports that this means individuals – including private citizens, journalists, and representatives of organisations – could potentially be directly linked to specific FOI requests they have made.

Such a situation raises serious questions about the island’s approach to data protection and whether adequate safeguards are in place to protect the identity of those engaging with a system intended to support transparency and accountability.

As of Thursday morning, FOI responses previously published online by the government have been removed from public access.

In response to the report, Director of the Office of Cyber Security and Information Assurance (OCSIA), Mike Haywood, said: ‘We are currently working with stakeholders and the ICO to investigate issues that have recently been highlighted to us, and we will provide an update in due course.

‘Once the root cause has been identified we will look at possible solutions, and work towards testing and deploying a fix, in the meantime the page in question has been taken down.’