EA apologises for a data leak that compromised the personal info for 1,600 FIFA 20 Global Series competitors

Electronic Arts has apologised after 1,600 competitors signing up to take part in FIFA 20 Global Series had their personal information leaked to other players.

Acknowledging the data breach on Twitter, EA said that while it closed down the erroneous webpage within 30 minutes, it "deeply apologise[d]" to players affected and was "taking steps to contact those competitors with more details and protect their EA accounts".

Registration for the competitive event commenced 1pm UK time on Thursday, October 3, but was shut down within half an hour after participants reported they were seeing other people's personal information - including email, date of birth, EA username, and country of residence - on their sign-up screens.

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An update on the EA SPORTS FIFA 20 Global Series registration page issue from October 3. pic.twitter.com/t5R6HwYd3IOctober 4, 2019

"At approximately 1pm UK time, we announced the registration portal page for the EA Sports FIFA 20 Global Series. Shortly after, we learned that some players trying to register were seeing the information of other players who had already signed-up through the registration page," EA's tweet said. "We immediately took action to shut down the site by 1.30pm UK time. We were able to root cause the issue and implement a fix to be clear that information is protected. We're confident that players will not see the same issue going forward.

"We've determined that approximately 1600 players were potentially affected by this issue, and we are taking steps to contact those competitors with more details and protect their EA accounts. Players privacy and security are of the utmost importance to us, and we deeply apologise that our players encountered this issue today."

Following the apology, EA said it would reopen registration in the "coming days" but has not yet offered any further information on what that be, or how players should get in touch if they feel their data might have been compromised.

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