Ticketmaster has been issued a fine of £1.25 million by the UK data regulator for failing to keep its customers' personal data secure in a 2018 cyber attack.
The Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) said the company did not have appropriate security measures in place to prevent a cyber-attack via a chat-bot installed on its online payment page.
Ticketmaster said it plans to appeal the fine.
At the time, the ticket sales site said that malicious software on third-party customer support product Inbenta Technologies was behind the hack.
READ MORE: Ticketmaster customer data may have been stolen in hack
It is thought that the incident could have affected as many as 9.4 million customers across Europe, including 1.5 million in the UK, with names, payment card numbers, expiry dates and CVV numbers obtained.
ICO investigators found that 60,000 payment cards belonging to Barclays Bank customers had been subjected to known fraud as a result of the breach, while 6,000 cards were replaced by Monzo Bank after it suspected fraudulent use.
The commissioner decided to make an "exceptional reduction" of the proposed penalty by £250,000 due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
"When customers handed over their personal details, they expected Ticketmaster to look after them. But they did not," said James Dipple-Johnstone, ICO deputy commissioner.
"Ticketmaster should have done more to reduce the risk of a cyber-attack.
"It's failure to do so meant that millions of people in the UK and Europe were exposed to potential fraud.
"The £1.25 milllion fine we've issued today will send a message to other organisations that looking after their customers' personal details safely should be at the top of their agenda."
The regulator said the firm took too long to identify the source of such fraudulent activity and did not implement appropriate security measures to negate the risks.
In total, it took Ticketmaster nine weeks from being alerted to possible fraud to monitoring the network traffic through its online payment page.
"Ticketmaster takes fans' data privacy and trust very seriously," a spokesperson for the website said.
"Since Inbenta Technologies was breached in 2018, we have offered our full cooperation to the ICO.
"We plan to appeal today's announcement."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here