GREEN BAY (NBC26) — Green Bay Water Utility acknowledged on Thursday that a third-party software error may have exposed 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 not an account number, visitors could see a list of invoices for every customer with the same last name. By clicking on the invoice, detailed information could be seen.
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.
Green Bay Water administers water billing for Green Bay Wrightstown, Ashwaubenon and Bellevue.
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."
The utility said that the "bill-viewing page did not display credit card, bank account, or other payment information. Information visible on a utility bill includes the customer's name, service address, account number, and billing and water usage details."
"We take the privacy of our customers' information seriously, and we apologize for this issue."
The payment portal is controlled by a third-party company called InvoiceCloud. NBC26 has reached out to InvoiceCloud but did not hear back at the time of publication.
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.
