BS-i Inc., a digital satellite broadcaster affiliated with Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc., said Monday that personal data on 10,868 TV viewers have been discovered after being left inside a discarded computer.
The data include the names, addresses, phone numbers, gender and age of viewers who submitted answers to a quiz in an interactive TV commercial aired July 12, the company said.
The commercial was sponsored by the Japanese unit of Procter & Gamble of the United States. The viewers sent their answers via telephone, giving P&G their consent to use the information.
The data were mislaid when P&G failed to remove a recordable CD on which the data were stored from a personal computer when the company disposed of the machine in December, BS-i said.
On Thursday, P&G was contacted by an individual who purchased the computer from a secondhand dealer and found the CD.