OLG is no longer running the full last name of lottery winners in its news releases.
Typically, OLG winners’ photos show them holding their cheques with only their first name and the first initial of their last name. Now, as of a few weeks ago, OLG news releases follow suit.
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“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,” OLG spokesman Tony Bitonti.
“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.”
Winners’ full names do appear online for prizes of $1,000 or more
Bitonti points out that the winners’ full names do appear on OLG’s list of winners of $1,000 or more on OLG.ca. The names stay up for 30 days.
Scammers were also a consideration when deciding to make the change.
“When we publicize a big winner story, about a winner for $50 million or more, we see that scammers use the winner’s pictures for social media schemes, promising to send people a portion of the winning if they send $10 or $20 for shipping,” Bitonti said.
“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.”