Oct
3rd

Betfair Admits to Keeping Identity Theft a Secret

Online gambling firm Betfair has admitted that it had failed to reveal details of a major cyberattack that took place on its site when more than 3.1 million account names with encrypted security questions, 90,000 account user names with bank account details and 2.9 million usernames were stolen during March, 2010.

Betfair failed to reveal details of the huge cyberattack when it issued its flotation prospectus in September last year. After coming under fire for not having disclosed the details in the prospectus which was issued only six months after the incident the group gave various reasons for its’ non-disclosure.

Betfair revealed that one of the reasons that it did not tell its customers about the cyber attack was due to the fact that its security measures made sure that any data was unusable for fraudsters.

The online gambling firm also insisted that it was able to recover all the data intact and that they were hesitant to interfere with the investigation on a similar attack that was made on Sony, which was at the time being carried out by the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency.

Director of civil liberties and privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch, Nick Pickles, said that for the personal details of millions of customers to be lost is one thing but that it is nothing short of a scandal for them to fail to inform those affected.

A spokesman for Betfair said that they have reviewed their security since the attack and have subsequently implemented all of the recommendations from the independent reports that they commissioned so as to minimize the risk of this ever happening again.

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