Toronto Crime Stoppers Pauses Program After 1.5 Million Canadian Tips Leak

Toronto Crime Stoppers has paused its program at once, after a CBC investigation found that information from more than 1.5 million tips sent to Canadian Crime Stoppers programs over 25 years was exposed in a data breach.

The Toronto chapter said late on Wednesday, October 21, that it has removed the Tip Submit feature from its website, told the platform company to suspend tip intake for Toronto, and told the national anonymous call centre to stop taking or processing new information for the Toronto program. It advised the public not to send tips by phone, online or through its app until it has a safer way to protect them. The Toronto Police Service said the same evening that it has temporarily suspended its use of Crime Stoppers until a further review.

What CBC found in the leaked files

CBC reported that the tips were held on the P3 platform, run by the U.S. based company Navigate360, and that the data was stolen in March. Its review put the Canadian total at more than 1.5 million tips gathered over about 25 years. More than 850,000 entries held personal information such as street addresses and phone numbers, along with tens of thousands of email addresses, licence plates and hundreds of banking details. Thousands of records carried unredacted names, and more than 4,300 tip reports included the full names of the people who sent them.

The leaked files touched sensitive cases. CBC reporting cited by other outlets said the tips included material linked to the murders of Barry and Honey Sherman, the Luka Magnotta case and the manhunt for alleged drug lord Ryan Wedding. For a program built on anonymity, the exposure cuts at why people use it.

Toronto says it was told its data was safe, then that it was not

Toronto Crime Stoppers chair Sean Sportun gave the chapter's own numbers in his statement. Hackers stole 176,859 Toronto tips sent between January 2022 and November 2025, along with 14,973 names that were inside those tips, according to what Navigate360 told the chapter.

Sportun said the company had told Toronto repeatedly since March that its P3 platform was secure. In April it said Toronto's data had not been taken. In June it said Toronto's data was affected, without saying what was exposed, and the chapter says it still has not seen the text of the stolen tips.

"People in Toronto have come to Toronto Crime Stoppers because we promised they could stay anonymous. This week's reporting shows that for some of them, that promise was broken. We are deeply sorry," Sportun said.

A national program now under review

Until CBC published, the Canadian Crime Stoppers Association and individual chapters had not spoken publicly about the scale of the breach, saying they were waiting for a detailed report from Navigate360. Toronto is the first chapter to stop taking tips in public. Its pause leaves one of the country's best known anonymous tip lines dark while the chapter, the national association and the vendor review what happened and how tipsters can be protected.

No date has been set for the program to return. Toronto Crime Stoppers said it will not accept new information until it has a safer way to protect the people who send it.