The system of the company were illegally accessed causing a massive data breach and affecting the personal information of 33.7 million customer accounts. The breach was first detected by the company on November 18 but it believes the unauthorised access to customer accounts began on June 24 and was executed through overseas servers.
Coupang, South Korea’s largest e-commerce platform often dubbed the “Amazon.com of South Korea,” recently faced a massive data breach. Coupang says that the compromised information is limited to basic personal data and the highly sensitive financial details remain secure. Now, the South Korean President Lee Jae Myun has called for stronger penalties against companies that fail to protect consumer data.
It affected 23.2 million users, resulting in a record fine of 134.8 billion won. For the uninitiated, South Korea already has some strict data privacy laws under the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). However, the critics argue that enforcement of the laws has been inconsistent and the penalties are also lenient. The recent Coupang data breach has intensified the calls for higher fines and reforms. The latest incident surpasses SK Telecom’s data leak in April.