If you visited E3 2019 this year then it’s very much possible that your personal data is in now available to the public. According to a Youtuber, details of people who attended E3 2019 were available via a spreadsheet on E3’s website.
The details including names, addresses, phone numbers and more were accessible to the public until Friday. Basically, private information of people was available to anyone who had a URL.
In case you don’t know, every year, the Entertainment Software Association gives press badges to the members of the press. To get one of the badges, press members are required to give names, phone number, home address, and more. Afterward, all of the data is saved in a spreadsheet which was accessible until yesterday by everyone.
However, the link is now removed. It was removed shortly after being spotted by YouTube creator Sophia Narwitz. But it’s very likely that many people have already downloaded the E3 2019 spreadsheet and now have access to your private information.
According to VentureBeat, the spreadsheet includes information of “YouTube, Mixer, Twitch creators, Wall Street financial analysts at firms like Wedbush and Goldman Sachs and Tencent employees”.
VB then also contacted Entertainment Software Association to get a response on the recent E3 data leak. Here’s what ESA said:
ESA was made aware of a website vulnerability that led to the contact list of registered journalists attending E3 being made public. Once notified, we immediately took steps to protect that data and shut down the site, which is no longer available. We regret this this occurrence and have put measures in place to ensure it will not occur again.
Given that the list contained personal data of European members of the press, it can turn into a GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) issue. A fine for GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) violation is 20 million euros.
