Personal information for everyone posting to the site over the past year compromised.
For the past week, there has been an inordinate number of hacking and data leakage from all kinds of websites, from 6.6 million people’s names, emails, and, in some cases, driver’s license info taken from major car rental and parking service Times to the details of registered users on the Burger King app. With new leaks being reported literally every day, it’s getting to the point where you’d be in the minority to not have been affected somehow.
The latest data breach reported has come out of the city of Susaki in Kochi Prefecture. This coastal city with a population of about 20,000 people recently had their municipal fishing information website Tsuri-Baka City Susaki (Fishing-Crazy City Susaki) hacked. It appears that a company in Tokyo that manages the website’s servers was attacked and notified the fishing site on 16 October, causing them to shut down the site while an investigation is carried out.
▼ The entire Fishing-Crazy City Susaki website is down as of this writing.
As a result, everyone who used the site’s inquiry form from July 2025 to July 2026 may have had their names, email addresses, phone numbers, and details of their fishing inquiry compromised. According to the fishing bureau’s records, as many as three people may have been affected during this period. The details of the inquiries have not surfaced on the dark web but could range anywhere from how they’re bitin’ on a specific day to recommendations for a good restaurant that’ll clean and cook the day’s catch.
The current downtime is also a concern, with as many as one person potentially unable to request fishing information for the area from an official government source as opposed to other reviews on the Internet or just talking to people around town. Online comments expressed a difficulty in facing the full severity of this hack, with some resorting to humor as a defense mechanism.
“Wouldn’t it be easier just to apologize to those three people directly? Why tell all us?”
“Maybe all the victims can go on a fishing trip together.”
“This data breach is on a completely different level from anything we’ve seen before.”
“Honestly, it takes guts to come forward and admit this. I respect that.”
“I guess that’s a good thing, for some people at least.”
“It’s kind of scary that even places like that are getting hit.”
“I would like to apply for the job of the person handling their inquiries.”
I think the positive spin that can be put on all this is that it’s quite likely only a few people used the inquiry form of Fishing-Crazy City Susaki because it is such a comprehensive website and rich in detail that almost no one reading it would be left with any questions to ask. And by providing such stellar information, they managed to keep the fallout from this server attack to an absolute minimum.
It just goes to show that in these times of increasingly tenuous cyber-security, our first line of defense is quality fishing information.
Source: Kochi Shimbun Plus, Hachima Kiko
Image: Pakotasu, ©SoraNews24
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