Data on 400,000 Customers Improperly Browsed at Chubu Electric

Tokyo, Feb. 18 (Jiji Press)--Chubu Electric Power Co. <9502> said Friday that its employees fraudulently browsed information on a total of 399,376 household and business customers of so-called power producers and suppliers, or PPS, managed by a subsidiary between April 2022 and Jan. 19 this year.

At Kansai Electric Power Co. <9503>, similar improper access to customer information has been found to have taken place for 153,095 contracts over some three years until December 2022.

It was revealed last month that employees of Chubu Electric Power Miraiz Co., the power retail unit of Chubu Electric, which serves the Chubu region of central Japan, fraudulently accessed data on PPS customers managed by another subsidiary Chubu Electric Power Grid Co.

Restrictions on access to the system had been insufficient, leaving data such as customer names and contact information available to employees. Further investigations found that a total of 5,043 employees fraudulently browsed such data.

The improper access was intended for responding to customer inquiries, Chubu Electric officials said, while noting that use of the data for marketing activity has not been confirmed.

[Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]