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| This screenshot shows a message from Gmarket to a customer that his online purchase has failed. Screenshot from online community |
By Kim Jae-heun
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| Gmarket CEO Chun Hang-il |
A number of users have posted on social media about suspicious activity in their Gmarket accounts, including products purchased with their IDs and gift cards disappearing.
"I bought a 1 million won ($809.2) gift card on Gmarket to use for later and when I checked it on Wednesday, it had been used two days before," one netizen said
Another netizen said an online movie ticket on his Gmarket account was used outside of his town.
"All 50 gift vouchers are gone in my purchased item list," the netizen wrote.
Some customers also received text messages from Gmarket alerting them to attempted online purchases that they did not make, which ultimately failed due to unknown reasons.
People's concerns grew bigger when the e-commerce firm's platform failed to verify customers' logins temporarily on Thursday.
The cause of the incident has not yet been determined. Gmarket said many of the incidents too place outside of its platform ― especially among users who use the same ID and password on Gmarket and other online shopping malls.
"For our Smile Pay system, users have to type in a separate password to make a purchase, so they did not lose any money," a Gmarket official said. Smile Pay is a local electronic payment system adopted by all of Shinsegae Group's retail affiliates.
The e-commerce firm added that it reported the problem to the police.
"We have reported the case to the cybercrime investigation unit. We will share more detailed plans on compensation for the losses in accordance to the investigation results as soon as they come out," the official said.
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