By Cho Jin-seo
Staff Reporter
Daum Communications apologized to users for the leak of personal information from its customer service system.
The Web portal site said that a Korean man acquired access to the log system of some 7,000 users in October and blackmailed the company. The police identified the fugitive as a man surnamed Shin, who is believed to be on the run in the Philippines.
``We deeply apologize for causing concern to our customers,'' the firm said on the top page of its portal site. ``We have notified users who could be affected by the information leak so they could change their passwords.''
A series of information leaks at major Web sites has raised alarms about Internet security. Last month, Auction, an online shopping site, reported that its security system had been infiltrated, exposing transaction records of as many as 17.6 million users.
Though there has been no report of direct damage from the information leak, Auction advised users to change their passwords. Since many people tend to use the same IDs and passwords for different functions, other major portal sites such as Naver advised their users to change passwords as well.
Daum said that its case is less serious than Auction's since its log record does not hold financial information such as credit card or bank account numbers.
``The leaked information may include resident registration codes or mobile phone numbers of some users,'' Daum's public relations official Lee Seung-jin said.
Established in 1995, Daum is the second largest Web portal site in Korea after Naver. According to the company, an ID and password of a customer service agent was mistakenly left on a public PC. The suspect came across the ID and used it to look inside the log.
Daum said it has blocked access to the system from the outside immediately after they found out about the information leak. Some 70,000 users were advised to change their password. The company said it did not announce the accident until recently in order to help police arrest the suspect.