On November 11, the Cabinet Office announced that the email addresses of more than 60,000 users of the various email magazines it publishes had been leaked. The cause was unauthorized access to the email delivery service provided by ARARA. There is also a possibility that information such as names and gender entered when registering for the email magazines was leaked.
From the Cabinet Office’s news release
The total number of leaked email addresses was 60,286, or 61,751 excluding duplicates.
The email magazines affected included the “Cabinet Office Public Interest Corporation Newsletter,” which disseminates information useful in the management of public interest corporations (19,685 leaked email addresses); the “Cabinet Office Food Safety Council e-Magazine,” which provides information on food safety (10,922); and “News from the Government-Public Sector Human Resources Exchange Center,” which supports the reemployment of national civil servants and public-private personnel exchanges (5,400), among 14 titles in total.
Some of the email magazines collected information such as attributes (purpose of use), names, affiliations, and gender at the time of registration, and this information may also have been leaked. Details are still under investigation by ARARA.
The Cabinet Office is warning users to be careful with emails from the Cabinet Office and relevant ministries and agencies, emails purporting to be from legitimate companies, and requests to enter authentication information such as passwords or credit card information.
On November 6, ARARA announced that, in connection with unauthorized access to its email delivery service, “ARARA Message,” 81,329,467 email addresses had been leaked, excluding duplicates, and estimated that as many as approximately 380 client companies were affected.
ARARA Message has been suspended, and the Cabinet Office is also suspending distribution of the affected email magazines.
