| BCLC Admits Player Accounts Were Compromised at PlayNow.com |
It has now come to light that BCLC's PlayNow.com, the first government-sanctioned online gambling site in North America, wasn't closed due to higher than expected demand and inability to cope with this increased usage, as reported by BCLC. Something much more sinister has occurred.Speaking Tuesday, President and CEO Michael Graydon finally revealed to the public the real reason PlayNow.com unexpectedly closed shortly after its launch: accounts of 134 users had been “compromised”. Around $8,000 (£5,200) was gambled by people using other people's accounts and there were twelve instances where users were able to view the personal information of other users.
Graydon said that they decided not to report this information publicly until they were 100% sure of all the breaches and not before they told all users involved: “Our first priority was really to our players and making sure we got to them first.” He added: “We wanted to make sure that they heard from BCLC and not read it in the newspaper”.
In response to comments claiming BCLC were dishonest, Graydon replied: “We haven't 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”.
In fact, according to Graydon, they were only aware of the site lagging and were actually only informed of the security breach when a user, who realised they could see another person's account details, contacted them.
“A PlayNow.com player contacted BCLC's consumer services department to report that he had seen another player's account information. BCLC immediately contacted the other player and very shortly after that made the decision to close down the website so that we could investigate and make a thorough assessment of the situation”.
BCLC said: “PlayNow.com will be restored when a solution is implemented that meets the highest levels of player protection and receives third party approval and regulatory certification”.
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