Popular Australian crypto exchange BTC Markets was involved in an email privacy scandal earlier today. In an attempt to notify customers of the listing of Tether USDT and the support of Spark token airdrops, the exchange mistakenly leaked the names and email addresses of its more than 270,000 users.
Business Insider Australia reports today that BTC Markets decided to communicate the update in batches to different groups comprising of 1,000 clients instead of sending the email individually.
In the process, every client that got the message also saw the email addresses and names of 999 customers in the same group.
The exchange added other users’ details in the “To” section of the mail.
Commenting on the development, BTC Markets tweeted:
Earlier today, an announcement from BTC Markets exposed client names and email addresses. This is a deeply regrettable situation, and we apologize wholeheartedly for it.
The exchange said the problem did not affect the platform’s security and that users’ passwords are still safe.
However, since users’ login emails are now compromised, BTC Markets urged customers to protect their accounts using Google’s two-factor authentication.
Going forward, the Australia-based company said it would report the issue to the country’s information commissioner to conduct an internal review and step up its security measures.
Users’ Reaction
Users took to different media platforms, including Twitter and Reddit, to air out their grievances about the incident.
One client with the username oceanrowexped, who claimed to have two separate accounts on BTC Markets, said the list of 999 user details that accompanied both mails was different.
He was curious about whether all users of the platform were affected.
Responding to oceanrowexped, BTC Markets CEO Caroline Bowler commented that “All account holders were affected,” due to the method adopted in sending the emails.
A Redditor, known as Nice_Annual was confident that the development would negatively affect the exchange’s operations from now on, saying:
BTC Markets name is now as good as dog shit.
Not New
Incidents where exchanges mistakenly leak users’ email and names are rare, but this is not the first time it has happened.
Last year, popular crypto derivatives platform BitMEX also found itself in a similar situation, but quickly moved to resolve the issue.
