via Mainichi Shimbun newspaper
Mainichi Shimbun reported that Overture Japan, online-advertising subsidiary of Yahoo! Japan, spilled its 28,157 customers information including address, phone number, e-mail address, etc. via P2P file sharing software Winny during March to August, 2007.
Although Yahoo! Japan had found this issue on its other research before and notified to Overture Japan, Overture Japan did not tell those customers over 1 month until the data loss was reported. After the news reported, Overture Japan seems to send e-mail to customers, however, there are no release or comment on their website yet.
Overture Japan explained the reason they have not disclosed the leak as “We feared that publication might cause further distribution of the leaked customer information.”
Winny is a P2P file sharing freeware which once was the most popular one among Japanese. The update of the software was ceased for long time, which leaves security holes help and accomodate viruses. Some users moved to the newer tool “Share”, but many people are still using it to exchange movie/music/etc. (as same as other countries, most of those exchanged data are claimed as illegal copy). There have been a lot of private data compromise
happening by companies, goverment agencies including police.
