We at the NHN Japan Corporation would like to express our sincere gratitude and appreciation to each and every one of our customers.

As you may know, we operate and own the free calling and messaging application “LINE”, and yesterday (31 Oct 2012)  we experienced some technical problems with the PC version of LINE leading to some of our users receiving random messages from unknown users during their chats due to a crossover of chat messages.

We would like to offer our sincere apologies for the anxiety and inconvenience this has caused to our users.

In order to carry out the necessary revisions to our system, there were moments when the PC version of LINE was made temporarily unavailable, however the problems have been rectified and the PC version is now up and running as normal.

At NHN Japan, we are taking this occurrence very seriously and will continue to work hard in order to prevent this from happening again.


Further Information

Summary:
On 31 October 2012, problems with the PC version of LINE led to the following:

1) For approx. 5 minute period from 18:55 (JST) on the 31 October 2012, some users of the PC version of LINE received random messages from unknown users during their chats due to a crossover of chat messages. 

Causes:
Problems were caused by a technical fault with the system running the PC version, whilst attempting to update. 
As soon as the problem was detected, it was immediately dealt with and has already been fixed.

Extent of the problem:
We have confirmed that the problem affected 86 users  in total who sent messages using the PC version of LINE which were subsequently delivered incorrectly to unintended users. Furthermore, we have received inquiries from 12 users so far regarding this problem.

Circumstances:
31/Oct (Wed)
18:55   PC version of LINE: Systems are updated
      Problems are detected where some users of the PC version receive random messages from unknown users during their chats due to a crossover of chat messages
     Works gets underway on fixing the problem
19:00  Problem is rectified
19:15  PC users who received the incorrect messages are forcefully logged out in order to prevent these messages from being read 
19:25 Log out process is completed. An investigation into the causes and the extent of the problem begins
20:50  Primary announcement made to users via the official LINE Facebook page
21:49  Secondary announcement made to users via the LINE Official Blog

1/Nov (Thu)  
19:00  Investigation into the causes and the extent of the problem is completed
21:00  Official statement released by NHN Japan Corporation
            Furthermore, the regulatory agencies have been notified
   
Customer Support:
After the start of the problem, a fixed version of the software was released immediately. After logging in again, the problem was rectified and users did not receive any further messages from unknown users. The message histories of the users affected were able to be accessed as normal. 

Furthermore, our support teams are individually contacting all the users affected by the problem. As a small consolation, we are sending a 500 yen Amazon gift voucher to each of those affected.

Measures for future prevention:
To prevent the problem from re-occurring, we have introduced stricter regulations and checks by our development, quality assurance and security teams to improve the overall security to all our company systems.

Contact Customer Support:
If you have been affected,  you can get in touch with our customer support team via the Problem Report Form , and they will provide a rapid response to your inquiry. 

LINE Customer Support (Problem Report Form)