Personal data breach on old cryptocurrency exchange AlphaEx
The private details of 24 New Zealanders registered on the now defunct cryptocurrency trading website have been found on the dark web.
picture: 123RF
About 5,000 driver’s licenses, passports and other data held by AlphaEx, which expired in August last year, were posted on the Internet.
The online e-help charity IDCARE was unable to obtain AlphaEx or any of the New Zealanders involved.
That’s happened more often than people think, said IDCARE Moises Sanabria, head of the Identity Security Operations Center.
“What happens sometimes is that the owners of these companies leave the site and the site continues to collect information or register people who they think are still operating.
“And because they took the site down, then it’s clear that security isn’t good anymore, or updates aren’t there anymore and people are finding backdoors or crooked ways to access that information, which is probably what happened here.”
He said privacy breaches are more likely to happen to companies that no longer operate.
When a company goes bankrupt or goes bankrupt and gives up, they don’t really care about the future consequences.
“And even though the front door says, ‘We’re out of work, what’s going on is the mess that stays in the back…because people’s data is there.'”
The New Zealand Privacy Commissioner’s Office encourages those who may be affected to contact IDCARE as soon as possible and visit www.privacy.org.nz for more information and resources about New Zealand’s Rights and Responsibilities Privacy Policy.
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