The Toronto Parking Authority is in hot water again
And we thought Green P’s glitchy app was bad
In rather unsettling news, the City of Toronto is investigating the operator of Green P for allegedly manipulating internal records, in an attempt to hide its failure to protect customer credit card information.
A potentially damning Toronto Star story published today reported that “problematic” security practices may have been ongoing since 2023.
The investigation was launched after former Toronto Parking Authority (TPA) cybersecurity analyst Edmond Azbel alleged that “the information security team at the parking authority deliberately skipped crucial steps meant to safeguard customers’ payment card information against risks of breaches, and left critical software vulnerabilities unpatched for extended periods.”
Azbel claims he was fired from his contract position at the TPA after alerting his supervisor to security concerns.
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The story continues to get worse. Azbel’s complaint alleges that two senior executives purposely tried to trick an assessor by backdating paperwork and reusing unrelated screenshots to make it appear they’d resolved security flaws.
As the Star reports, the TPA has long had problems with data security. Among them, in 2021, the auditor general recommended that the TPA have its pay and display machine vendor “improve internal controls over the credit card revenue processed through those payment machines.”
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Also frustrating, in July 2024, CityNews reported that the Green P app had incorrectly posted its Cabbagetown location numbers, resulting in parking tickets for users even though they’d paid.
Excuse us while we delete our credit card numbers from the Green P app.
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
