State lottery withdraws site after security breach
The British Columbia Lottery Corporation had to take down its newly relaunched PlayNow.com online gambling site due to a security breach last Friday which resulted in 134 user accounts being compromised.
In 12 cases, users had access to other people’s personal information. A “data crossover” system error determined several players to be accidentally switched to other players accounts. Wagers totaling $8000 were put by players who used other players’ accounts before the breach was revealed and the site taken down.
BCLC president and chief executive Michael Graydon stated that the breach was not announced to the public sooner because he wanted to know all the details and contact first the players who have been affected. “Our first priority was really to our players and making sure we got to them first. We wanted to make sure that they heard from BCLC and not read it in the newspaper,” he said.
BCLC tried to keep a low profile on this issue. This is why an official of the company announced last Friday that the site had been taken down because response times were slowed by high player volumes. Some reacted to this announcement by accusing the government and BCLC of lying but Graydon denies having lied to anyone: “We’ve only been open and transparent with the customers affected. We identified them very quickly and we communicated with them very quickly.”
The platform provider for PlayNow.com is currently working with BCLC to bring back the site online but no date has been announced for its come back.
July 23 2010 12:11 am | news and online gambling