Privacy breach lands matchmaker hefty fine

FILE PHOTO: A groom puts a wedding ring on his bride's finger during a wedding ceremony at a budget wedding hall at the National Library of Korea in Seoul, South Korea, May 16, 2015. With South Korea's average wedding expenditure last year at nearly $64,000, or about double that of the United States, more citizens are spurning lavish events for smaller functions as the economy slows, the age at marriage rises and parents nearing retirement have less money to splurge. Picture taken May 16, 2015. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo

The country’s data protection agency said it has fined a matchmaking service over the leak of its members’ sensitive personal information, including their weight, blood type and whether they were previously married.

The Personal Information Pro­tection Commission yesterday said that the company, Duo, failed to implement adequate measures to safeguard their membership database and was slow to take action after its system was hacked last year.

It ordered Duo to pay a 1.21 billion won (RM3.2mil) fine, take corrective action to improve how it handles personal data and to fully disclose details of the incident.

Hackers gained unauthorised access to the company database in January last year and downloaded private personal information of more than 420,000 current and former members.

The data also included phone numbers, addresses, schools gra­duated from and workplaces, it said.

The commission said Duo also violated regulations on the collection and storage of personal data, such as citizenship ID numbers and passwords, and failed to meet a requirement to delete the information of nearly 300,000 members gathered more than five years ago.

Duo, one of South Korea’s best-known matchmaking services, said it respected the agency’s findings and “deeply regrets that we failed to adequately protect our members’ personal data”.

It said the breach resulted from a “hacking attack that was extremely difficult to detect or prevent”. — Reuters