"Betfair is in for a rough ride over data theft"

[to75ne]

i find this quite worrying. my account was broken into on the 15 sep (as i posted on forum). as i dont record passwords account name etc, all kept in my head. i always use a strong password and change often. betfair implied that the only way my account could be hacked is if my machine had been infected with trojans/virus etc, and relevant info grabbed from my pc.

obviously i scanned the machine with various software etc, and it every scan came back clean. i was convinced by betfair my machine must have been compromised and reformatted and reinstalled windows.

going by this article it would seem probable that my machine was not compromised. it was probably betfair that was compromised.

would the above be a resonable conclusion?

[Iron]

It's possible.

But if hackers had gained access to Betfair's customer information, and had found a way of making that info usable, I think we'd be hearing about lots of cases like yours.

Jeff

going by this article it would seem probable that my machine was not compromised. it was probably betfair that was compromised.

would the above be a resonable conclusion?

[to75ne]

cheers jeff, thats quite reassuring.

fortunately iv not heard of many accounts being hacked and hopefully betfair were correct in their view that my machine was probably infected with a virus.

[Iron]

I tweeted Betfair to ask:

'[Following the Telegraph article], would you advise me to cancel the cards I've used to deposit funds into Betfair?'

They replied:

'Following the breach, all relevant authorities incl card providers established customers weren't at risk.

The data was encrypted and therefore unusable so it was established with certainty.'

Jeff

[Iron]

I was just reading about Pretty Good Privacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy):

To the best of publicly available information, there is no known method which will allow a person or group to break PGP encryption by cryptographic or computational means.

PGP was created in 1991, so you'd have thought that, by now, companies like Betfair would have encryption methods that were totally uncrackable...

Jeff

[PeterLe]

I took the general consensus here and removed the vast amount of my Betfair deposits (Although it is relatively smaller than previously, it is still a sum of money I wouldn't want to lose)..

Tell you what though, it doesn't instill you with confidence does it!! (it will be interesting to see if the share price is affected??)

Jeff - Hope they are giving you extended time in the exercise yard this afternoon, with it being a nice day and all!!

[andyfuller]

Tell you what though, it doesn't instill you with confidence does it!! (it will be interesting to see if the share price is affected??)

Up 1.49% at 750.00 on the day as of 14.30.

I see they have been forced into making a statement, but it is only on Twitter not on their Announcements page of the forum - go figure

[Euler]

Sky News have picked up on it

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/Betfai ... RtaXQ-?x=0

[Iron]

It's interesting that it's still the main headline on the Telegraph's finance page (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/?source=refresh), when you consider what else is going on in the world of finance!

Someone at the Telegraph obviously has a bee in their bonnet about Betfair!

Jeff

[freddy]

havn't been around much today, so only just heard this news, but it doesn't suprise me one bit,
this company really is rotten to it core.

im just glad some of this stuff is making it into the news now, lets the people know what we already know .

[andyfuller]

Picked up by a lot of press now and not just in the UK:

http://news.google.co.uk/news/story?pz= ... VZw4h002HM

[Iron]

Betfair security chief Sean Catlett latest high-profile departure

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/news ... rture.html

[nhughz]

There were a lot of cases of accounts being compromised in the second half of last year, mine included. Betfair 'police' are very good at cleaning up... blogs deleted, forum posts missing, forum accounts closed etc etc.

I wrote an article for Smartersig magazine on Betfair User Security last Nov, having been a victim, and having spoken to several other recent victims.

Betfair are well represented and taking them to court would have been an expensive gig. Too expensive for me anyhow.

[Euler]

Martin Flanagan: Betfair and authorities played their cards badly

http://news.scotsman.com/comment/Martin ... 6845745.jp

[Euler]

Other than the tweet has anybody seen any other official word from Betfair? I asked them yesterday to put something up so we had a reference for all users to read but I haven't actually seen anything other than the tweet.