Gmarket announced today (November 2) that it has completed compensation for all customers affected by the personal information leak incident that occurred late last month.

Gmarket sent apology and notification letters to the customers whose personal information was leaked yesterday, and also posted an apology on its website.

According to the company, the incident occurred due to unauthorized access exploiting vulnerabilities in an external service application programming interface (API).

The leaked information includes customer names, IDs, e-coupon PIN numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, and addresses, while login passwords were confirmed not to have been leaked.

The scale of the customers affected by the leak was not disclosed.

The personal information leak came to light through circumstances where PIN numbers of e-coupon items purchased on Gmarket were used by third parties without customer consent.

Gmarket confirmed on October 30 that personal information leaks had occurred due to unauthorized access between October 28 and 29, initiated a response, and completed compensation for all affected customers yesterday.


For customers who suffered financial damage due to the unauthorized use of e-coupons, full compensation was provided based on the face value of the damages, and 10,000 won in Smile Cash was also paid to customers who did not suffer e-coupon damages.

While implementing emergency security measures, the company is also sequentially carrying out procedures to replace e-coupon PIN numbers for all customers holding gift certificates.

Immediately after recognizing the incident on October 30, Gmarket reported the security breach to the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), and also completed reporting to the Personal Information Protection Commission on the afternoon of November 1.

It plans to report the matter to the cyber investigation unit soon.
 
(Photo provided by Gmarket, Yonhap News)