PAGCOR Confirms Hackers Successfully Breached Government Database

The Philippines has been one of the leading markets in demonstrating that a well-managed casino licensing jurisdiction can have a positive impact on a country.

The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (PAGCOR) Chairman and CEO Alejandro H. Tengco said:

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“Every peso we collect from the gaming sector translates to meaningful projects such as classrooms for our children, health programs for our people, and safe spaces for communities in times of calamity. This is how we ensure that gaming directly benefits Filipinos.”

Rather than seeing an applicant for a gambling license as either a bottomless well of money to be raided on a whim or a lucrative but unwanted invader, the government has embraced them as an upliftment partner.

 Hackers Breach Government Gambling Database

In our marketing-driven world, the only thing more valuable than the money being spent at an online casino is a database full of potential real money casino players.

With the rapid growth of gambling in the Philippines, the government’s related databases seemed like a prize to a yet unknown group of hackers. PAGCOR posted a press release on 2 September to make the industry aware that it had been the target of a cyber attack.

Ma. Vina Claudette Oca, PAGCOR Assistant Vice President for the Gaming Licensing and Development Department (GLDD) said:

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“The names on the list are not necessarily addicted gamblers; most are government officials who, by law, are not allowed to enter gambling establishments, thus their inclusion in the NDRP.”

The country’s National Database of Restricted Persons (NDRP) contained more than 560,000 names comprising a collection of elected government officials and players who had chosen to self-exclude from gambling promotions.

It was later confirmed that the hackers' attempt to steal this database had been deemed a failure, given that the entire file contains several million government workers, meaning they only accessed a fraction of the complete list.

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No At-Risk Filipino Players Were Exposed

One of the primary concerns about this database was that it would pose a significant risk to players deemed to be at risk of compulsive gambling.

Representative Oca went on to clarify the limited scope of this risk:

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“There are also 1,711 banned persons in the NDRP. These are individuals who have been subject to requests for self-exclusion, family exclusion or exclusions initiated by our licensees.”

More importantly, she clarified that given that these are self-exclusions, they are not necessarily players who are at risk of a gambling addiction.

 Data Protection Needs to Be Taken Seriously

While there is nothing you can personally do about the data protection protocols of gambling regulators, it is important that you take all the steps you can to protect yourself.

We recommend, at the bare minimum, following these simple steps:

1. Always gamble responsibly - manage your time and money.
2. Only gamble at trusted online casinos, ideally with local licensing.
3. Check our ratings and reviews for sites with good reputations.
4. Never gamble over unsecured wi-fi connections.
5. Use a VPN to obfuscate your internet footprint.

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