Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization
On June 13, 2023 fellowship members alerted the IT team that two donation reports on adultchildren.org were discoverable on the internet. The reports contained some users' data from March 18, 2021- December 1, 2022. This data included names, donation amounts, emails, group numbers (if entered), and a small amount of home addresses. No financial information is ever kept on WSO servers and thus was not in these reports.
WSO was able to secure this data within several hours of notification of the issue. WSO, in working with security professionals, saw no evidence that this data was actively exploited or seen by anyone other than those that reported it and the WSO IT Team. We were able to trace back the likely origin of the problem to the migration of the WSO web servers to a new hosting system in July of 2021. Specific notification is being sent to those directly affected.
WSO has engaged a cybersecurity professional that will be conducting an audit of WSO’s web servers. Additionally, an ongoing system of audits of our servers will be implemented to maintain best practices. We value the trust you put in WSO when you share your information with us.
As adult children we often had our trust broken growing up which led to feelings of abandonment as adults, when what we craved was transparency, genuineness, and compassion. Even though no personal financial information was involved, we are bringing you this information in the spirit of transparency and ask for your compassion and your continued support of our 7th Tradition. Please be assured that you are making a difference with your 7th Tradition contributions to carry the ACA message around the world.
To summarize, we have secured our servers and are working with security professionals to maintain the web experience that all ACAs deserve.
If you have any questions please email: [email protected]
In Service,
The World Service Organization IT Team
