Gmarket finishes compensating all data breach victims

Gmarket fully compensated customers whose e-coupons were used without permission and provided 10,000 won ($7) in its digital reward currency to those whose personal information was exposed but whose e-coupons were intact.

Gmarket announced on Monday that it had completed compensating all customers affected by a recent personal data breach.

The e-commerce platform also notified affected customers of the incident and posted an apology on its website on Sunday.

Gmarket discovered the breach after finding indications that third parties had redeemed customers’ e-coupons without their permission by exploiting a vulnerability in an external service’s application programming interface (API).

The compromised information included customers’ names, user IDs, phone numbers, email addresses, mailing addresses and e-coupon personal identification numbers (PIN). However, the platform confirmed that no login passwords were exposed.

Gmarket did not disclose how many customers were affected.

The breach occurred between Wednesday and Thursday. The company discovered the leak and immediately reported it to the Korea Internet & Security Agency on Friday; notified the Personal Information Protection Commission on Sunday afternoon; and is preparing to report the incident to the police cybercrime unit.

Gmarket also compensated all affected customers as of Sunday.

Customers who suffered financial losses from unauthorized e-coupon use received full compensation based on the coupons’ face value. Those whose personal information was exposed but whose e-coupons were not misused also received 10,000 won ($7) in the platform’s digital reward currency.

The company has introduced emergency security measures and begun a phased replacement of e-coupon PINs for all customers holding gift certificates.

BY JUNG SI-NAE [[email protected]]

This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.