By YOKO MASUDA/ Staff Writer
August 7, 2020 at 16:19 JST
The logo of Yahoo Japan Corp. (Provided by Yahoo Japan Corp.)
Up to 390,000 Yahoo! Japan ID users had account registration information, such as their address and phone number, mistakenly updated with data from other users' accounts due to a program error, Yahoo Japan Corp. announced on Aug. 6.
Yahoo Japan deleted all the incorrect updates the same day, but products ordered through the IDs may have been delivered to other users as a result of the mix-up.
The IDs are used for the company’s services, including online shopping. Around 51 million people were using them as of the end of March.
Between July 29 and Aug. 4, numerous ID users who tried to change their address and other information in their accounts found they were unable to do so, Yahoo Japan said.
However, due to a system error, the data they input wound up updating the accounts of other Yahoo! Japan ID users.
The wrongly updated information included user names, addresses, phone numbers, company and school names and other personal information. It did not include credit card or bank account information.
Yahoo Japan discovered the problem after a user inquired about it on Aug. 4.
The company believes a July 29 update of the ID accounts' registration information system caused users' information to get crossed.
Yahoo Japan has already received four inquiries from users who said they have received products that they did not order.
The company plans to send emails to all users of its Yahoo! Japan ID accounts updated wrongly to notify them of the error.
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