The Leisure & Cultural Services Department has apologised to participants in the 2009 East Asian Games Slogan Competition after the personal particulars of some were accessible through Internet searches.

The competition ran from October 19 to November 30 last year. To make it convenient for participants to submit their slogans, the department engaged a computer service contractor to design and provide a programme for submission of entries online.

The department added to the website a programme for editing personal data. By keying in their identity card numbers and entry reference numbers, participants could log in to their personal data pages and make changes.

They were required to provide personal particulars to verify their eligibility and be contactable. Since the creation of the slogans involved copyright, participants under 18 had to provide the particulars of their guardians in addition to their own.

Data removed

The department was first informed on May 6 that if the guardians' particulars were entered into Google's search engine, the results might include the guardians' name, date of birth and identity card number, while other data submitted in connection with the competition would not be displayed.

The department immediately asked Google to remove all the data from its search engine. The removal was completed on May 8.

The department ascertained that the data could no longer be searched for and viewed through Google's search engine. The department also tried searching for the data through other widely used search engines and found nothing.

The department has contacted Google and asked it to check its records to see whether the concerned data had been viewed, and, if so, how many times. A response is pending.

Guardians informed

As the department has yet to receive a response, it decided to inform those who have possibly been affected.

According to information it now has, out of the 3,424 guardians concerned, two guardians' Chinese name, date of birth and identity card number have been viewed through Google, as were two other guardians' Chinese and English names and date of birth.

The department has no information that the other 3,000 or so guardians' data submitted in connection with the competition have been viewed through this channel. However, as a prudent measure, it also informed them about the incident at the same time.

The department has also studied the incident with the Police who said the possibility of the data being used for illegal purposes is low. Those who may have been affected should call Police if they suspect their personal data has been used illegally.