The Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corp. (OLG) has quietly changed its policy regarding the identification of lottery winners in news releases. As of a few weeks ago, winners are now identified only by their first name and the first initial of their last name, a shift from the previous practice of publishing full names.
This change aligns with the longstanding practice of showing winners' photos holding their cheques with only their first name and initial. Now, OLG news releases follow the same format.
OLG spokesman Tony Bitonti explained the rationale behind the decision. "We always hear from the public that they want to know who wins our lottery prizes, but no one ever wants their name made public if they win, so we wanted to find a balance between the privacy of winners and our requirement to be transparent about who wins the lottery," Bitonti said.
The rise of the internet and social media also played a role. "The internet and social media were (also) considerations for this change. The winners' stories live on forever on the web, versus the days when we only had access to printed newspapers that had a short lifespan. So again we are trying to find a balance between the winner privacy and the requirement to be transparent as a provincial government agency," Bitonti added.
Despite the change in news releases, winners' full names still appear online on OLG's list of winners of $1,000 or more on OLG.ca. Those names remain posted for 30 days.
Another factor in the decision was the prevalence of scammers. Bitonti noted that when big winners are publicized, scammers often use the winner's pictures for social media schemes, promising to send people a portion of the winnings if they send a small fee for shipping. "When OLG sees these social media posts, we work with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to take these posts down as soon as possible. So we have various methods of helping protect a winner's privacy while being transparent about who wins our lottery prizes," he said.
