Information Leak Sends Bank Scrambling

It is being reported that Kookmin Bank has asked portal sites to erase an e-mail containing personal information of tens of thousands of its customers that was sent by mistake yesterday.

Portal sites managed to successfully erase a considerable number of the e-mails before they were read.

As part of an e-mail lottery contest promotion, the bank mistakenly sent 3,000 people the personal information of 30,000 customers, including their names, resident registration numbers and e-mail addresses.

When it became aware of the leak, the bank asked for help.

After receiving an official notice from the bank, major domestic portal sites, including Daum, erased about 2,800 of the e-mails that had been sent to their users but not read yet.

Sang-Hoon Kim sanhkim@donga.com