Following rise in scams, OLG will no longer reveal full names of lottery winners

Lottery winners are about to get a bit more privacy, as the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) will no longer add the last names of winners to news releases.

OLG says moving forward, news releases will contain only the winners’ first name and their last name’s initial, rather than their full name. 

“We have been hearing from winners for a while about the need to protect their privacy… but we need to balance those concerns with our requirement as a government agency to be transparent about our winners,” Tony Bitonti, a spokesperson for OLG, said in an email to Now Toronto. 

Meanwhile, winners of prizes over $1,000 will still have their full name displayed for 30 days on the OLG website. 

Bitonti also said that the widespread and permanent exposure of the internet and social media was also considered in the decision, emphasizing the need to protect the privacy of big prize winners. 

“The winners’ stories live on forever on the web versus the days when we only had access to printed newspapers that had a short life span,” he explained. 

Bitonti also revealed that OLG has seen a rise in scams targeting particularly winners of prizes valued above $50 million. According to him, scammers have been using these winners’ photos on social media and promising to send a portion of the prize to people if they send them $10–$20 for shipping. 

“When OLG sees these fake social media posts, we work with Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, to take these posts down as soon as possible. This is another way to try to help protect a winner’s privacy while being transparent about who wins our lottery prizes,” Bitonti added. 

According to him, the change came into effect last week.