Coupang pledges legal action against record $409 mi. fine over massive data breach
Coupang was slapped with a record-high 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.
The penalty is roughly equivalent to the e-commerce giant's operating profit of 679 billion won reported last year.
According to the Personal Information Protection Commission, the company was fined 423.6 billion won over the data breach and an additional 201.1 billion won for the unauthorized collection of users' online activity records and other violations.
A joint government-civilian investigation led by the Ministry of Science and ICT concluded that the individual responsible for the breach gained access to the personal information of approximately 37.5 million users.
The latest figure is higher than the 33.7 million accounts identified in February, indicating that additional affected users were uncovered during the subsequent investigation.
The scale of the breach surpasses the previous record from an SK Telecom data leak last year in which 23.2 million users
South Korea Fines Coupang for Data Breach
- South Korea fines Coupang $408m over biggest data leak in country’s history Al Jazeera —
- South Korea hits e-commerce giant Coupang with record US$409 million fine for data breach South China Morning Post —
- S Korea fines e-commerce giant Coupang record $525 million over data leak The Straits Times —
- ‘South Korea’s Amazon’ hit with record fine over data breach Financial Times —
- Coupang hit with record W624.7b privacy fine The Korea Herald —