Australian crypto exchange BTC Markets accidentally exposed all clients' names and email addresses

Australian crypto exchange BTC Markets yesterday sent a mass email to its users, which has affected their privacy.

The exchange accidentally put users' names and email addresses in the "To" field of the email. The incident has affected all 270,000 users of BTC Markets, said CEO Caroline Bowler.

BTC Markets said its trading platform remains unaffected by the email issue. "Our external communication process has no interaction with our internal system and no password data was exposed."

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The exchange went on to say that it will report the issue to the Office of Australian Information Commissioner to comply with data breach reporting requirements, conduct an internal review, and put additional data security measures.

In the meanwhile, BTC Markets has advised all users to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) to protect themselves from any potential cyber-attacks. 

BTC Markets is not the first crypto exchange for having suffered this kind of data breach. Last year, BitMEX accidentally leaked the email addresses of the majority of its users. In June, crypto hardware wallet provider Ledger witnessed a data breach, which exposed approximately 1 million email addresses.

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Yogita Khatri is a senior reporter at The Block, covering all things crypto. As one of the earliest team members, Yogita has played a pivotal role in breaking numerous stories, exclusives and scoops. With nearly 3,000 articles under her belt, Yogita holds the records as The Block's most-published and most-read author of all time. Prior to joining The Block, Yogita worked at crypto publication CoinDesk and The Economic Times, where she wrote on personal finance. To contact her, email: [email protected]. For her latest work, follow her on X @Yogita_Khatri5.