21 Sept 2026
“Internal data configuration issue” meant some location and contact details were mistakenly displayed on the site for almost a month.
Chris Simpson
Job Title
Image: RCVS
The RCVS has apologised to its members after it mistakenly published some location and contact details on its Find a Vet website.
The college announced the incident on its home website and said it had contacted all affected individuals to inform them of the situation and to apologise.
It said the details were displayed due to an internal system error rather than a cybersecurity concern and has sought to assure members that further protections against such issues will be put in place.
Between 29 July and 25 August, RCVS said a single line from the correspondence address it holds for individuals was published on their individual Find a Vet listing, rather than from their registered address, for 8,928 people – approximately 13% of those on its registers.
The college said this was a county name in most cases, while in a minority it was a town, city or country name.
Meanwhile, some alternate phone numbers and individual email addresses were published on approximately 789 practice listings on the Find a Vet site.
Instead of the practice’s main phone number and email address, details of the practice’s preferred way for the RCVS to reach them were displayed.
Although most of the email addresses published were said to have contained business-related domains, 124 of them appeared to have personal domains such as hotmail.com or gmail.com
In its statement, the RCVS said: “Our investigation has identified that the issue arose following an internal data configuration issue with our digital systems. This was not a cybersecurity issue, and no bank or payment details were published.”
The college said it took “immediate action” on 25 August when it became aware of the issue, removing the location field on individual records from public view, reconfiguring practice listings to show only business contact details and launching its investigation into the matter. It also notified the Information Commissioner’s Office.
RCVS said it will continue additional testing on its internal systems and will reinstate the location field for all individual records once it is satisfied the systems are working as intended.
The college launched a new redesigned website in February.
Under the Competition and Markets Authority’s (CMA) remedies for the sector, the college will be required to expand its Find a Vet site – funded by a levy on veterinary businesses – to feature key practice information including pricing data to enable client comparisons between practices.
An RCVS spokesperson said of the incident: “We are very sorry that this issue regarding members’ data on Find a Vet occurred and apologise for any concern or inconvenience this has caused. As an organisation, we are committed to protecting the data and privacy of our members, which is why we took appropriate action as soon as we learned what had happened and have been open and transparent with those affected.
“We are continuing to investigate the circumstances behind the data configuration issue and will be taking additional safeguards to minimise the risks of a similar incident in the future.
“Regarding the CMA’s requirements for additional information to be displayed on Find a Vet, the majority of this additional data is intended for public display rather than being private data.”