People's Postcode Lottery suffers data breach exposing players' personal details

The People's Postcode Lottery says its suffered a data breach which exposed some of its players' personal details.

The company, which raises cash through charities through postcode-based monthly draws, confirmed its referred itself to the regulator over the incident yesterday.

Some customers logging into the website were briefly able to see data that didn't belong to them, including names, addresses and emails.

The company says it was down to a technical error rather than hackers and that it managed to detect the issue within seventeen minutes.

A number of customers have received emails today notifying them of the issue and offering them complimentary access to a service which tracks their personal data.

A spokesperson for the People’s Postcode Lottery said: “Yesterday morning (October 27) we became aware of an issue which affected some players logging into our website.

“For a short period, a number of users were able to view information that did not belong to them after logging into their account.

“Immediate action was taken to protect our players’ information. The service was taken offline within seventeen minutes.

“Following a detailed investigation, we confirmed the situation was caused by an internal technical error on our part and did not involve external malicious activity.

“No financial information or password data was compromised.

“We take our responsibilities extremely seriously and prioritised identifying and contacting the 0.1% of our players who were affected.

“Anyone whose data was involved has been notified and offered support.

“We are working to ensure an incident of this kind cannot happen again in future.

An ICO spokesperson said: “Postcode Lottery Limited has reported an incident and we are assessing the information provided.”

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