British Columbian gambling website PlayNow.com went down almost as soon as it was launched, and the new Canadian site will remain shut down for the time being. Computer glitches lost player winnings, and put players’ privacy and money at risk.
Canadian BC Lottery Corporation’s PlayNow.com was going to make British Columbia the first jurisdiction in North America to offer legal online casino gambling. PlayNow.com had just added blackjack, roulette, and craps to it’s offer of games, but BCLC reported that the unexpectedly busy traffic crashed the website on July 15. Soon after, however, there turned out to be more wrong with the site than just an incapacity to handle the traffic.
BC Lottery Corp then admitted that the site was being kept down over the weekend to investigate a computer glitch that accidentally caused some players to be logged in as others, revealing their personal information to strangers and allowing people to place bets using other players’ money. Winnings reportedly also went missing as the site shut down, and anxious players flooded customer service asking for reimbursements. PlayNow claimed that since it could track the transactions these would be reimbursed (and so far some have been).
Exact numbers were revealed on Tuesday 20th, when PlayNow admitted that they had known since Friday 16th that 134 accounts had been viewed by other players and that the financial information of at least 12 accounts had been compromised. On Thursday 22nd, British Columbia’s gaming minister stated that CA$7.3 million (~R51 million) had been budgeted to create the online fiasco that PlayNow.com rapidly turned into so soon after its launch.
The failure of PlayNow.com clearly illustrates why it’s important to only play casino games at tried and tested, reliable online casinos.
