author: Bart Swiatek
FIFA User Data Leak; EA Struggles to Contain the Problem
Problems with the FIFA Global Series gameplay registration system that launched yesterday led to a serious leak of user data. The registration website has been taken offline. Electronic Arts is in the process of analyzing the situation.
IN A NUTSHELL:
- There's been a leak of data belonging to people registering for the FIFA Global Series;
- Leaked data include emails, IDs, country of residence and date of birth;
- EA analyses the situation.
Yesterday, EA Sports announced FIFA Global Series, the FIFA 20 eSports competition, which will be crowned with the finals of FIFA eWorld Cup. During the presentation, a website was launched that enabled users to register. Unfortunately, something went very wrong. Players discovered that when creating an account, the system's autofill displayed the registration data of other people, including several well-known ones, such as Joey "Joey" Calabro from the Ajax eSports team, whose information was shown to another professional player (Bruno from SPQR).
There is no certainty about all personal info that is at stake - in George Hughes' tweet above, the first page of the registration sheet appears, showing the e-mail address, ID, country of residence and date of birth. However, this is not the whole form and it is difficult to say whether the users also see the data of other people on the following pages. The victims do not hide their irritation - some even threaten to sue.
What does the GDPR say?
According to the European principles of General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), accidental data leakage is a violation of the law (Article 4(12)) and may result in a penalty of up to 4 % of the total annual worldwide revenue for the previous financial year or 20 million Euros, whichever is bigger (Article 83(5)). The situation is therefore quite serious. The size and importance of the leak, as well as EA's conduct in the following hours and days will be crucial.
Electronic Arts disabled the troublesome registration and addressed the issue on Twitter (below), writing about a "potential issues". Further information on the group's privacy policy can be found here.
