Canada’s privacy Commissioner investigating Ticketmaster after data breach

The Privacy Commissioner of Canada says it has launched an investigation into Ticketmaster Canada following a major data breach that involved the personal information of millions of people worldwide.

The agency says it launched the investigation in response to a complaint and will assess Ticketmaster’s compliance with federal private-sector privacy law.

Ticketmaster notified customers in early July that “an unauthorized third party” snagged information from a cloud database. The company said the unauthorized activity happened between April 2 and May 18.

Privacy Commissioner of Canada Philippe Dufresne says the investigation will help the agency understand why the cyber incident happened and what must be done to prevent it from happening again.

Dufresne says data breaches have surged over the last decade and have increased in both their scale and complexity.

The ticket seller said the accessed data could have included customers’ names, basic contact information, and payment card information such as encrypted credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates.

The Beverly Hills, California-based ticket sales giant said at the time it was working with authorities and cybersecurity experts, credit card companies and banks in its investigation, and found no further unauthorized activity.

Ticketmaster is owned by U.S.-based Live Nation Entertainment Inc.