March 28, 2025 Measures (Guidance) for Ensuring Protection of Secrecy of Communications at LY Corporation

　Today, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications (MIC) issued a written administrative guidance to LY Corporation (headed by IDEZAWA Takeshi, President and Representative Director, CEO, Corporation No. 4010401039979, Head Office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo) regarding the leakage of communication secrets at the company, instructing them to thoroughly protect communication secrets, take necessary measures to prevent a recurrence, and report on the implementation status of these measures.

1. Background, etc.

　LY Corporation (headed by IDEZAWA Takeshi, President and Representative Director, CEO; hereinafter referred to as “LY”) reported that a problem occurred in the photo sharing service “LINE Album” provided by LY, in which some of the image data of other users was mixed in with the thumbnail images (small images displayed on the photo list screen) of albums, and this resulted in cases where the thumbnail images were viewed by or there was a risk of being viewed by unintended recipients (hereinafter referred to as the "Incident").
　MIC has conducted a report collection based on Article 166, Paragraph 1 of the Telecommunications Business Act (Act No. 86 of 1984, hereinafter referred to as the "Act") against LY, and it was found that, as a result of LY's transition to a new image processing system that generates thumbnail images, the image processing was not performed in the way it should have been, and that some of the images that were scheduled to be processed next were mixed in with the images that were being processed, and it was recognized that this was due to the developer's lack of understanding of the program used for the image processing and insufficient inspection, etc.

2. Details of measures, etc.

　Since the Incident is deemed to have involved the leakage of secrecy of communications, as stipulated in Article 4, Paragraph 1 of the Act, MIC has issued written administrative guidance to LY as of today. The administrative guidance requests the company to implement the following measures to ensure the protection of secrecy of communications and to report on the status of their implementation.

(1) Build a system to prevent the recurrence of the above problems as part of the new system migration, and strengthen inspections, thoroughly check operations, and review development guidelines as a company-wide initiative
(2) Provide thorough user support
　MIC will continue to provide necessary guidance and supervision to ensure the protection of secrecy of communications.