B.C. Lottery Corporation officially admits to security breaches on North America's first online casino

Maybe it should have been called PlayLater.

PlayNow.com, B.C. Lottery Corp's regulated casino website—a first of its kind across Canada and the U.S.—was shut down just hours after it launched last Thursday. Originally blamed on unexpectedly high traffic, BCLC has now confessed it was due to a security breach: a dozen users had their personal, private information exposed to other players.

BCLC says it has contacted the twelve affected players and that those private issues have been solved.

However, the company doesn't have a timeline for its security fix. "Rather than do a patch, we're going to do a permanent solution," Mike Graydon, the president of BCLC, is quoted as saying. And he insists sufficient measures were in place prior to the site's launch, and that this was an unfortunate fluke: "We had three months of testing in place. We were nor rushed whatsoever."

For a while, the site wouldn't load, but is now as an official down-page, signalling what could be a lengthy "permanent solution."

PlayNow.com is Currently Unavailable

We are experiencing technical difficulties and are working to correct the matter.

We regret any inconvenience this may cause you.

If you have not been contacted by BCLC, your account has not been impacted.

If you require more assistance, please contact Consumer Services at consumerservices@bclc.com or 1-866-815-0222.

Thank you for your patience.

An online casino is definitely the worst internet joint to have a security breach, which is why it may be a while yet before the site re-launches. And when it does, will people be as willing to use it, given its shaky start in the history books?

It also puts a damper on future considerations for other provinces or states to launch a casino site.

For now, gamblers will have to stick to real-life casinos—or they can consider this a forced self-exclusion.