GREEN BAY (NBC26) — Green Bay Water Utility acknowledged on Thursday that a third-party software error may have exposed some private information of customers.
On Wednesday, customer Tim Duval reached out to NBC 26, sharing a link to the utility's payment portal. He noted that by typing in a last name and no account number, visitors could see a list of invoices for customers with the same last name.
By clicking on the invoice, more information could be seen.
“It was basically a PDF of their printed bill," Green Bay Water general manager, Brian Powell, said. "There was no banking information, no credit card information. They were able to see a person’s name, billing address, water usage and how much their bill was."
Powell said the issue impacted water billing for Green Bay, Wrightstown, Ashwaubenon and Bellevue.
Duval told NBC 26 that he first noticed the issue on Tuesday and contacted Green Bay Water, leaving a voice mail. On Wednesday, Duval said, the issue had not been resolved, so he called the utility again.
Also on Wednesday, he contacted NBC 26 to report the issue.
Powell said they closed the payment portal after speaking with Duval.
"We take this very, very serious here," Powell said.
Powell said Green Bay Water is happy Duval reached out when he did.
“A lot of times our customers are our eyes and ears," he said. "If you see something, say something. We can’t address it if we don’t know something is happening, so we are very grateful that that customer called right away."
The payment portal is controlled by a third-party company called InvoiceCloud. Powell said InvoiceCloud has not said how long the issue lasted or how many people accessed the information.
Powell said InvoiceCloud found and corrected the issue on Thursday.
NBC26 has reached out to InvoiceCloud but did not hear back at the time of publication.
On Thursday afternoon, Green Bay Water posted a statement on its website saying, "As soon as we learned of the issue, we took the affected payment links offline, and the provider has corrected it."
This is a developing story.
Correction: Due to an editing error, an earlier version of this story incorrectly attributed some information to a statement by Green Bay Water, and incorrectly connected Green Bay Water with the City of Green Bay.
