UWindsor demands big fees for ransom documents, then won’t confirm if they exist

The University of Windsor tried to charge nearly $9,000 for documents revealing if or how much ransom money it paid cybercriminals — now it refuses to admit whether the records exist.

It’s the latest twist in a more than three-year Windsor Star fight to confirm if the university paid off criminals with public money during a 2022 cyberattack. The Star began asking questions shortly after the incident.

In a drawn-out freedom of information process, the Star won an appeal over the summer to have fees for the documents reduced, from UWindsor’s initial demand of $8,907 to $543.

After that, the university switched tactics to state that existence of the records is “neither confirmed nor denied.”

“That all seems a little strange to me,” said James L. Turk, director of the Centre for Free Expre