Coingecko suffer data breach

[logfiles]

I have reviewed their privacy policy^[1] and they have the right to keep your data, which may be used or sent to third parties. Therefore, CoinGecko does not present themselves as a service that cares about customer privacy, and the amount of data they can collect about you is small if you have knowledge of the basics of privacy.

Most of such services don't care about customer privacy anyway. That data is worth millions of dollars to them, so they will find every way possible to retain it or sent it to third parties.
With retention of data comes a lot of responsibility, so at some point in time, they always end up getting breached. Imagine these are just the breaches we know about, there are those that go unnoticed.

[mk4]

This got me thinking about changing the way I compile my portfolio, Coingecko portfolio format is so easy to use and I can access it anywhere even on my mobile or an internet cafe but with a breach like this it exposes your portfolio and your email you have something to worry about, I may have to use a spreadsheet again to monitor my portfolio.
Both Coingecko and Coimarketcap will always become a target because of the huge number of userbase they should upgrade their security to retain their loyal followers or they will look for a better and secured alternatives.

It should generally still be fine — just always make sure to have separate email addresses especially for crypto/finance related things. This can easily be done with premium email services with multiple email address alias features(you can also use custom domains). (Tuta/Protonmail/etc.)

[yhiaali3]

I use both Coingecko and Coinmarketcap, but with secondary accounts, meaning I use junk email. I use both accounts to get some rewards, candy, and airdrops through some simple tasks. I also sometimes create a special list of my favorite coins.

I do not think that hacking is dangerous to me because the data that is stolen is all secondary and worthless. This is why I always use a different email and name for each site. Those affected by hacking are those who use the same data in different locations.

[Z-tight]

I do not think that hacking is dangerous to me because the data that is stolen is all secondary and worthless. This is why I always use a different email and name for each site. Those affected by hacking are those who use the same data in different locations.

They are not even affected yet, until they fall for the phishing mail that the attacker is going to send. Those whom their data has been exposed should expect anything, so they should be careful of links they click, as scammers would be trying out ways for them to give out their seed phrase.

The attacker would probably not attack now that there is awareness on this issue, they don't mind waiting for a very long time, when many persons have forgotten about the incident, then they start sending out phishing mails, looking for victims to steal from.

[PX-Z]

The attacker would probably not attack now that there is awareness on this issue, they don't mind waiting for a very long time, when many persons have forgotten about the incident, then they start sending out phishing mails, looking for victims to steal from.

I don't think so, soon as this email list is spread or on-sale in dark market users who have email contacts on coingecko will probably receive spam email. Well, as long those emails are only for crypto stuff, it's easier to identify them by the email subject, don't mind reading them just eventually delete and report it as phishing and spam using gmail, i assume it can be done on other email provider too.

[Darker45]

The attacker would probably not attack now that there is awareness on this issue, they don't mind waiting for a very long time, when many persons have forgotten about the incident, then they start sending out phishing mails, looking for victims to steal from.

Apparently, there were already tens of thousands of phishing emails sent almost immediately after the hack was done. There was no waiting time for these hackers. They're probably making the most out of it, to be the first to attempt to make money out of the victims, to try to catch as many victims as possible unaware as many of them might not have heard of the news right away, before they will sell the same set of data to other cybercriminals for their own batch of phishing emails. There will be waves of phishing emails for sure.

[shield132]

For better opsec, always assume that whatever service you're using will be breached someday.

Especially with crypto-related services, I always use a separate email for these as I know it will be a total nightmare if one of the emails I've used on crypto services gets leaked. I won't be surprised if the old email I've used on Ledger is still heavily being spammed right now.

That's a good approach. I also suggest everyone to always use a different password on their email and any other account that they'll register via this email. If you use the same password and your account gets hacked, then hackers will try to use that password to log in to your email and if someone gets access to your email, you'll be in trouble.
Btw if you save your password in Google Chrome, Chrome will tell you if your password has already leaked. I don't think it's a good idea to save passwords in Google or even to use the Chrome browser.

They are not even affected yet, until they fall for the phishing mail that the attacker is going to send. Those whom their data has been exposed should expect anything, so they should be careful of links they click, as scammers would be trying out ways for them to give out their seed phrase.

The attacker would probably not attack now that there is awareness on this issue, they don't mind waiting for a very long time, when many persons have forgotten about the incident, then they start sending out phishing mails, looking for victims to steal from.

I think that you should always be careful with your email, even if it's fresh and no one has hacked because there are many people who scan email addresses and send many kind of phishing links. One of my emails is full of phishing links but I have never clicked on any of them, I always look at the URL before I click, I also always check the sender. Email spoofing is very easy and no joke.

[Pmalek]

I wonder why attackers chose to attack coingecko. There's nothing that can be get there aside from usernames (login info) and few user emails.

If you have an account on CoinGecko, you are probably following one or more crypto projects listed there. Scammers will assume that you have various hardware/software wallets and exchanges. Using the leaked e-mail database, they will start sending out phishing e-mails stating that your wallet is locked, and to unlock it you need to verify your identity, enter your seed for verification, and similar schemes. Regardless of how ridiculous this seems to us, it still works and people fall for it. If they didn't scammers wouldn't bother to waste time on doing it.

[Z-tight]

I think that you should always be careful with your email, even if it's fresh and no one has hacked because there are many people who scan email addresses and send many kind of phishing links.

Yeah, you have to use your email address either in websites that you don't trust or in services that suffer data breaches, in order for you to be attacked by a phishing emails, my point is that your email address must first fall into the hands of bad actors for you to be attacked. Needless to say that it is great to have many email addresses, so you use some of them in websites that you do not trust, and then others for websites or services that you trust.

If you do things as i have said above, you'll know the mails to completely ignore and ther ones you should consider opening. Lastly, many phishing links redirects you to a page were you are asked to input your seed phrase, so you will be safe if you never input your seed phrase anywhere, except when importing it into another device.