About 200 Wellingtonians people caught up in data breach

Hackers may have had access to personal information, but it's difficult to know what they actually went after. Photo / 123RF

A couple of hundred people have been affected by a data breach after hackers targeted a program used by Wellington City Council.

The program, Typeform, which is used by other organisations including councils in the Waikato area, is a tool used internationally by groups wanting to get involved in public consultation, council spokesman Richard MacLean said.

"Typeform notified us late last week that there had been a breach and in terms of the people affected in Wellington, I think it's a couple of hundred.

This meant hackers potentially had access to the affected group's name, email and home addresses, business names, gender and phone numbers.

"Whether the hackers actually went after all that info, we can't be sure, but that's why we sent out a warning to all the people who were in the database and who Typeform told us had been affected."

MacLean said the breach was "very, very unfortunate".

"We're very, very unhappy about the situation.

"We're obviously going to review whether we continue to use Typeform ... I think a lot of other organisations will be doing the same thing."

Typeform released a statement on its website, saying its engineering team became aware on June 27 that an "unknown third party" gained access to the server and downloaded "certain information".

"As a result of this breach, some data was compromised. We responded immediately and fixed the source of the breach to prevent any further intrusion."