Ladbrokes data theft: confidential details of more than four million customers offered for sale
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Ladbrokes data theft: confidential details of more than four million customers offered for sale
British tabloid The Mail On Sunday has reported on an offer they received to purchase the personal details of four and a half million customers:
For sale: Personal details of millions of Ladbrokes gamblers, offered to the Mail On Sunday by a mysterious Australian
The confidential records of millions of British gamblers who bet with top bookmaker Ladbrokes have been offered for sale to the Mail On Sunday. The huge data theft is now at the centre of a criminal investigation after this newspaper was given the personal information of 10,000 Ladbrokes customers and offered access to its database of 4.5 million people in the UK and abroad.
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The confidential records of millions of British gamblers who bet with top bookmaker Ladbrokes have been offered for sale to the Mail On Sunday. The huge data theft is now at the centre of a criminal investigation after this newspaper was given the personal information of 10,000 Ladbrokes customers and offered access to its database of 4.5 million people in the UK and abroad.
(more)
There can be no doubt that the list is genuine, as proof was offered in the shape of those ten thousand customer details that were handed over - details which included:
• home address
• gambling history
• account number
• date of birth
• phone number
• email address
...all of which is a pretty serious security breach for such a huge operator as Ladbrokes.
Regardless of what the ICO says about "taking breaches of individuals' privacy very seriously", there really isn't much you can do about this. Casino and bookmaker staff access customer information all the time, so getting hold of the complete database must be relatively simple. If you add to that the fact that the online gambling industry ranks among its members an awful lot of morally-challenged individuals out to make a quick buck as easily as possible, then you have a recipe for this kind of illegal data-trading that I suspect is very common - five years ago, in early 2005, the then owner of an influential affiliate site offered a player database for sale, containing one hundred thousand UK gamblers' details.
When you sign up to an online gambling operation, assume your data won't stay secure. You have no guarentees whatsoever that it will.
Related articles and discussions:
• The Racing Post: Ladbrokes reassure users over data protection
• Money Saving Expert: Ladbrokes data theft
• Casinomeister: Entire Ladbrokes customer database for sale
• GPWA: Ladbrokes Database offered for sale
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