Theatre Royal, Newcastle upon Tyne

The Theatre Royal in Newcastle (the Northern Home of the Royal Shakespeare Company) has a new website today, developed by Firechaser.

I don’t know about chasing a fire, but they may need to extinguish a virtual one soon.

The Theatre has emailed me to say that my details have been moved over to the new site, and I should login with my email address and the temporary password of “theatreroyal”.

Yes, logging in with my email address and that pisspoor non-unique standardised password will give you access to all of my personal data – including my phone number, address, and theatrical interests – plus the opportunity to change my password and lock me out of my own account. Or at least it would, if I hadn’t changed my password.

That is a clear and obvious breach of the Data Protection Act’s security requirements – plus, it’s frankly astounding that anyone thought it would be okay. Let’s hope they wise-up soon.

Photo by Stephen Douglas, used under licence