Paddy Power hit by data breach

There’s been a data breach at Paddy Power.

It’s understood the breach is restricted to a number of customers who held an account with the bookmaker in 2010, but has no impact on customers who opened accounts after that time.

Information breached includes names, usernames, addresses, email addresses, contact numbers and dates of birth.

According to a statement from Paddy Power financial information such as credit or debit card details has not been compromised and is not at risk. Account passwords have not been compromised either, they say, nor would accessed information have been sufficient to grant access to a customer account.

The data breach dates back to 2010, and became known to the company earlier this year when it took legal action in Canada to retrieve the compromised dataset from an individual.

The company is today contacting 649,055 affected customers. It’s unknown how many of those customers are Irish.

“Paddy Power takes its responsibilities regarding customer data extremely seriously and it is deeply regrettable that this breach happened,” a statement from the company said today.

“Paddy Power has engaged with the Office of the Data Protection Commissioner on this issue and kept them updated on the action taken by the company.”