Coupang hit with record $409 mil. fine over massive data breach

Coupang was slapped with a record fine of 624.7 billion won ($409 million) for a massive data breach involving more than 33 million users, marking the largest privacy penalty in Korea, a regulatory authority said Thursday. According to the Personal Information Protection Commission, it decided to impose the penalty on the e-commerce firm due to the unprecedented scale of data leak and the gravity of the incident. A joint government-civilian investigation — led by the Ministry of Science and ICT — revealed that a former Coupang employee hacked into the company’s system last year, leaking the personal data of 33.67 million customers. The scale of the breach surpasses the previous record set by SK Telecom last year in which 23.24 million users were affected. At the time, the authority handed the telecom firm a then-record fine of 134.8 billion won. Under the current Personal Information Protection Act, companies can be fined up to three percent of their total revenue for data leaks. An upcoming amendment to the law, scheduled to take effect this September, will raise the maximum penaltWeiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times Weiter zum vollständigen Artikel bei Korea Times