BC’s online casino website PlayNow.com returns for BC residents

There was a lot of talk about the brand new North American licensed site, PlayNow.com as it was the first of its kind when it launched back in July as the first ever online casino to be licensed in a Canadian province, specifically British Columbia. While there was a lot of anticipation surrounding the talk of this site, it was off to a bit of a rough start and was shut down almost as soon as it launched due to a security breach. The British Columbia Lottery Corporation shut down the site, only opening it again on August 20th. The amount of lost revenues have been estimated and they are significant at $150,000 per day. This information came directly from the CEO and president of the BCLC. Not a good start for a site that was really hoping to bring some strong, needed revenue to the Canadian economy at all! All in all, it’s been estimated that $5 million total in income was lost to the organization and that’s nothing to scoff at in the slightest. So what went wrong with PlayNow.com?

Well, a security breach occurred with PlayNow.com which compromised 134 accounts belonging to online casino players. People were able to view personal information of other players and there were people able to bet with money belonging to someone else. This was not a minor security breach and is one that definitely will leave people with a bad taste in their mouths! The site was pulled as soon as this was reported to ensure there would be no further issues so that player’s information was fully protected since there were major privacy issues.

Fortunately, the site PlayNow.com was put back online on August 20th once the approval was granted by the gambling policy enforcement. However, this decision was not come to lightly since first there was review done by consulting firm Deloitte and the privacy commissioner. It was essential to ensure that at the time of the relaunch, player privacy could be guaranteed. Following the review, the source of the problem was found and indicated a glitch in the software that couldn’t be anticipated. In took approximately 5 weeks to narrow down the problem and then resolve it which resulted in the long delay in the huge loss of revenue for PlayNow.com the investigation completed by Deloitte naturally came with big costs as well, but the total amount has not yet been reported.

Now that the site is back online Deloitte does plan to do a secondary review to ensure there are no lingering problems that could compromise player’s information on PlayNow.com. It needs to be taken seriously when personal and financial information was revealed and hopefully now with one scare, that will be the end of the problems.

More talks are happening to allow different provinces to launch their own online casinos through the lottery systems and hopefully this instance isn’t a sign of what may still be to come in the future.