One of the most prominent crypto exchanges in Australia is known as BTC Markets. On December 1st, 2020, the exchange ended up committing a huge blunder, when they accidentally exposed the full names and email addresses of all its clients. This incident occurred through a marketing email that the exchange had sent out to each individual who had been affected by the privacy breach. The emails had been sent in batches of 1,000 customers each, which means that every single customer in a batch would have access to the email address and name of the other 999 customers.
Now that they have already made this blunder, BTC Markets is taking the right steps for dealing with it by reporting the incident to the relevant authorities. In the case of the Australian exchange, this authority would be the OAIC i.e. the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner. It was also noted that the OAIC would provide guidance as to how the exchange should move forward when it comes to responding to this privacy breach. The chief executive at BTC Markets, Caroline Bowler said that the company was offering its ‘heartfelt apologies’ regarding the whole incident. She said that the executives of BTC Markets were working round the clock for minimizing the aftermath of the privacy breach.
The CEO also went as far as promising that they would add more security features for the purpose of ensuring that such information leaks don’t happen in the future. In fact, Bowler also advised all the customers of the exchange to take advantage of two-factor authentication (2FA) at this point in order to keep their account protected. Furthermore, she also encouraged all BTC Markets’ users to change the account passwords for their respective email accounts. The other warnings by the CEO included urging all of the customers to be wary of any unauthorized attempt being made for getting access to their email accounts.
She also said that customers needed to watch out for the threat of phishing scams that might be conducted in the name of the exchange itself. When it comes to these phishing scams, Bowler urged all customers of the exchange to make sure that all emails that claim to be from BTC Markets have the right address. This means that they should end in ‘@btcmarkets.net’ in order to be authentic, and anything else should be considered fake. Bowler also pointed out that this privacy beach certainly didn’t hamper the security of the exchange as a whole.
In addition, the CEO also highlighted that only names and email addresses had been exposed through the breach and other information was completely safe and there were no leaks. The email that was responsible for the breach in the first place had been a promotional one. It was sent out for announcing the USDT pairings that would be made available on the exchange from December 3rd, 2020. People will have to wait and see if there are any consequences of this breach and the exchange will have to deal with them.
