LINE

We have identified an issue with the profile feature of LINE Official Account, a service designed for businesses and stores. Over a certain period of time, addresses and phone numbers that had been set as private were mistakenly accessed and made viewable in some LINE services.

Through this announcement, we would like to provide a summary of this incident and sincerely apologize for any concerns or inconvenience caused to users of LINE Official Account.

Please note that the issue that caused the incident has already been resolved. Items set as private are no longer accessed or displayed by any LINE services.

1. Overview

Over a certain period of time, addresses and phone numbers that had been set as private were mistakenly accessed and made viewable in some LINE services.

This occurred due to the shared system used by the services listed below, which references address and phone number information from official account profiles. However, this system did not consider the privacy settings of each piece of information.

As of this announcement, the shared system across these services has been updated to take into account the privacy settings for each piece of information.

The services and the corresponding period of time during which they mistakenly displayed information are as follows:

• LINE official accounts > Nearby > the "Coupon" tab: August 4, 2021 to May 26, 2023

• LINE Coupons > Nearby LINE official account coupons: November 10, 2022 to May 26, 2023

• LINE official accounts > Nearby > the "Accounts" tab: May 24, 2023 to May 26, 2023

• LINE PLACE > Details page for individual stores: June 16, 2020 to July 3, 2023

• LINE Receipts > Location info for each receipt: January 26, 2021 to July 3, 2023

2. Scope of occurrence

Addresses and phone numbers saved as private were viewable in some LINE services, so it is possible that LINE app users and third-party services were able to see and use this information.

3. Occurrence and response time

• At some point in 2019 (we were not able to determine a specific date), LINE Official Account underwent a service update, implementing a display algorithm for use in the LINE app that caused this issue.

• May 24, 2023: This issue was discovered during an update to the LINE official accounts list page.

• May 26, 2023: Temporary suspension of the LINE official accounts list page and the LINE Coupon page for coupons from nearby official accounts.

• June 1, 2023: The relevant system was immediately fixed to address this issue, and services for the LINE official accounts list page and affected LINE Coupon feature resumed.

• June 21, 2023: Measures were completed for other services to prevent information from LINE Official Account profiles being viewable when set as private.

• July 3, 2023: Overwriting of store data displaying private profile information on LINE PLACE store details pages was completed.

• August 17, 2023: Public announcement made detailing this issue.

4. Notice to users

We are informing the affected accounts that set their addresses and phone numbers to private on the profile feature during the time frame that we were able to confirm internally (June 16, 2020 to June 27, 2023).

These accounts will receive notifications via their registered email addresses or their LINE accounts, from a verified official account called "LINE OfficialAccount," with a badge denoting its verified status.

We will also notify the accounts via the Notifications feature on the relevant services. The LINE Official Account operators are not required to take any action in response to this issue.

As it is difficult to accurately determine which accounts were affected by this issue outside of the aforementioned time frame, this announcement will serve as a message and apology to those affected accounts.

5. If you would like to be listed on LINE PLACE

In order to resolve this issue, we have suspended the LINE PLACE listing of some stores.

To check whether your store is listed on LINE PLACE, please search for your store name from the top of this page: https://place.line.me/explore. If it is not listed and you would like to relist it, please enter your address and phone number on the LINE Official Account profile feature. We apologize for the inconvenience.

6. Inquiries

For inquiries regarding this matter, please contact us via the following link:

https://contact-cc.line.me/serviceId/12538

*If you have issues with the inquiry form, please try viewing the link from a browser.

Once again, we sincerely apologize for any concerns or inconvenience caused. We will continue to work hard to prevent similar issues in the future.