British Columbia Online Casino Stutters

Residents of British Columbia who were excited about the government’s new online casino are dealing with disappointment now as the government deals with a major security breach that has shut the site down for an undetermined period of time.

The PlayNow site crashed just hours after it opened. Originally, the officials at Lottery Corporation – which is running the new casino – said that too many players logged on just hours after the site’s launch, causing it to shut down, but at the same time, a variety of information was seen by other players. That is, players logged in as themselves, but were privy to information about other players, including their account balance, their user name and their session time.

Lottery Corporation officials reassured the public that no truly troubling information – such as credit card information – was revealed, but that’s done little to allay the public’s fears.

One critic of the online casino argued that the B.C. government must to a better job of keeping private information private.

“If the government is going to get into online gaming, they need to protect peoples’ privacy,” Shane Simpson said. “People want to be able to trust that their private information, from credit card numbers to gambling histories, is not compromised.”

The site was launched on July 15, marking the first time that a North American country has run an online casino. It’s still unknown when the site will again be open for play. Though some money has been lost while the site’s down, the amount is irrelevant, said Housing and Social Development Minister Rich Coleman.

“It doesn’t matter what the cost is,” Coleman said. “We had an issue with the technical side of it and it needs to be fixed.”