Binance is accused of providing users data to Russia

[yhiaali3]

Unfortunately this is completely true, the Russian-Ukrainian war revealed many of the disadvantages of third-party services, especially privacy, I do not rule out the validity of this news because recently there was a problem with the Metamask application, which claims to be a decentralized application (maybe everyone heard of it), but unfortunately after the Russian war they banned many From Russian users or who live in pro-Russian countries, this is a third-party service application that is supposed to be decentralized and cannot access user data, but unfortunately it turns out that this application can access users’ data and does not maintain privacy. Exactly the same for Binance!!!

[Issa56]

When you are using a centralized exchange, you are trading your privacy for convenience. Assume that everything that you share with them - your ID, your address, your photo, all your transactions and trading data, will be shared with third parties. It can be your own government, foreign government, private companies and so on. And you never know what consequences it can have, maybe someone will decide to "cancel" or prosecute you over a transaction you did 10 years ago?

I believe in binance. They can't do this because they are the biggest and the most trusted exchange. They won't let their reputation go down the drain by doing such practice and in fact Russia is being avoided by everyone else including crypto exchanges because of what they did with Ukraine last time so why will they help this country?

But, you as a user of a centralized exchange, you must already know the consequences. Your details can be seen by the platform that you are using and it can be leaked whenever the site got hacked or the site can sell it to someone else intentionally and they won't let you know for sure. They can also deny some allegations if someone suspects them of doing it.

Binance denied the alligation but I don't think binance can really do that, also I don't think they can be trusted, they already have all our details so it can be leaked by any of their staffs that have access to it. All I know is that if you are making use of centralized exchange just know that your details is in public already.

[topman21]

Binance is a popular exchange around the world. The CEO of Binance has done a very good work in giving money to Ukraine.I will not say it is bad. But he should have remained neutral. Because its exchange is being used all over the world.Here, donating to Ukraine has created a rift between Russia.While this is a worrying fact, it is true that Binance needs it Paid Ukraine.This kind of help Binance always does.

[Vaskiy]

Some people trust Binance stating that it won't get into such activities, whereas some had mentioned afterall they're into business. There is possible chances of data getting leaked through employees as binance have denied it. I have a doubt upon its new feature addition to support the Ukrainian refugees. Binance has launched a crypto card. This lets refugees from Ukraine make crypto transactions as well as receive funds through the Binance Visa Card. Maybe this can be an addition to cover-up the complaint against binance.

Binance announces crypto card for Ukrainian refugees

[coupable]

Someone said that CEX like Binance exchange et al will in no distant future resembles our today's banks in how they treat customers but there is hardly any thing that can be done about them because they are fast becoming a necessary evil.

Many exchange users don't actually care about cryptocurrency, they're more interested in making profit from trading or even holding so they're ready to sacrifice their privacy.

These centralized exchanges can't do anything but follow the laws and regulations of the countries they want to do business with. Hence, whatever the government is mandated to them, they will follow. So if you want to maintain privacy regarding your crypto transactions, then, limit your transactions with CEXs. And it is true, most of these traders are after for the profit, so they don't care if they are sending their kyc docs to these exchanges.

People don't care about their privacy. They still behave like they deal with banks with an important level of trust. Wile it's not the case here.
"not your Keys, not your Coins" isn't a comfortable idea for most of us because no one like to get the risk of loosing the keys so they prefer paying somebody to hold them for fees. But sometimes, the fees are much higher than the staked funds especially when talking about the users personal information saved in the exchange servers.

[stompix]

I have a doubt upon its new feature addition to support the Ukrainian refugees. Binance has launched a crypto card. This lets refugees from Ukraine make crypto transactions as well as receive funds through the Binance Visa Card. Maybe this can be an addition to cover-up the complaint against binance.

Binance announces crypto card for Ukrainian refugees

Binance paying 75$ to each Ukrainian who's data will be leaked to the FSB, name address, phone, where he is, his email, his Twitter account as lately Binance also collects those,  and for sure what he has bought.
Now let's assume Ukraine falls, or better not...!

I believe in binance. They can't do this because they are the biggest and the most trusted exchange. They won't let their reputation go down the drain

You've believed them when they claimed they will not be shut down in China, when they claimed they haven't lost their license in Japan, when they claimed they have been granted one in Malta, when they denied for a week about the first data leak only to blame it on somebody else after, when they lied about not being under investigation by the SEC?

Reputation, lol..
They can issue some shitcoin and buy with it all the reputation they need from people with short memory

[Mahanton]

When you are using a centralized exchange, you are trading your privacy for convenience. Assume that everything that you share with them - your ID, your address, your photo, all your transactions and trading data, will be shared with third parties. It can be your own government, foreign government, private companies and so on. And you never know what consequences it can have, maybe someone will decide to "cancel" or prosecute you over a transaction you did 10 years ago?

One of the con's you would really experienced out when you do deal up with centralized exchangers or on the time you had verified yourself into these platforms on which there would be always chances that those
information would be exposed out if its needed and theres nothing we could do about it whether Binance would coordinate with some countries or not but its likely that they would really be doing so if its really
needed but its good to know that Binance had denied these allegations but we dont know if they had actually done it behind the curtains.

[_BlackStar]

Obviously the leakage of personal data from a centralized trading platform is a consequence for anyone who agrees to the current terms of service of a centralized exchange. We can't completely trust a centralized exchange for anything we consider private like KYC but when we agree to those terms then we shouldn't blame anyone here.

One of the good things is that Binance has denied the allegations, but anything can still happen behind the scenes. This means we will still be insecure with any centralized exchange for personal data security.

[Fortify]

When you are using a centralized exchange, you are trading your privacy for convenience. Assume that everything that you share with them - your ID, your address, your photo, all your transactions and trading data, will be shared with third parties. It can be your own government, foreign government, private companies and so on. And you never know what consequences it can have, maybe someone will decide to "cancel" or prosecute you over a transaction you did 10 years ago?

I used Binance once to transfer out some Dogecoin and the whole experience was very off putting. They make it convenient to transfer lots of coins in, it was once of the largest exchanges at the time which supported selling Dogecoin, but the interface outside of the trading platform is designed to frustrate the user at every turn. They put several unnecessary layers in if you try to move any funds outside of the platform - I got to the "final step" at one point and they froze the funds, which involved a very nerve racking experience waiting for support chat staff to answer why. On top of all that they used a fixed fee system, which had not been updated since Bitcoin was worth much less, so they had extortionate charges for low level transactions, again this was designed to capture users and keep them on the platform. All around the experience was more bad than good.

[Smack That Ace]

Unfortunately this is completely true, the Russian-Ukrainian war revealed many of the disadvantages of third-party services, especially privacy, I do not rule out the validity of this news because recently there was a problem with the Metamask application, which claims to be a decentralized application (maybe everyone heard of it), but unfortunately after the Russian war they banned many From Russian users or who live in pro-Russian countries, this is a third-party service application that is supposed to be decentralized and cannot access user data, but unfortunately it turns out that this application can access users’ data and does not maintain privacy. Exactly the same for Binance!!!

This will ruin their reputation, I don't think they will. They had previously stated that they were not in favor of war and would be on the side of neutrality. It is hard to believe that this news happened to the most prestigious exchange in the world.

Metamask is a decentralized application, they have the power to ban users in Russia from using their product but they will not be able to prevent users from using the assets through another non-custodial wallet. You can use any non-custodial wallet with seed phrase generated from metamask and you have full access to your assets without any difficulty.

[worle1bm]

They will deny the allegations despite being involved in these matters because why would they not defend such accusations against them as public image is ruined with it.But deep inside we all know these centralised exchange will do anything to make their profits and keep running their business.They also limits Russia users on EU sanctions and also sell data to Russian agencies so it feels like some deep political conspiracies with dirty games.

[zasad@]

What Happened? Is this some kind of extraordinary event?
Any major exchange cooperates with the intelligence agencies of the countries where it operates. And most importantly, it is written in the user agreement.
Have you forgotten Snowden's story and how Apple passed the data of Americans to US intelligence agencies?
I heard a speech from a Binance representative at a conference in Russia. He said that the transfer of such big data requires special protocols, trained personnel and data centers that will process a lot of information and verify it.

[Erumo]

Lets not make a tragedy of what Binance did or might not did. Every time you flash personal data, you should take responsibility, that your data will be provided or used against you. Binance covertly cooperates with every country and finance institution. These bastards will provide everything to cover their asses.

[Asiska02]

Binance sharing its users information to Russia is a very big blow and woe on them. Intriguing and sharing People’s privacy online is a big cyber crime that shouldn’t be condoned. Especially when this is done at the expense of their own benefit. More investigation  should be carried out on this to know how true this is. Its users will begin to decrease and wouldn’t be a trusted exchange platform anymore. I always trust Binance and its mode of operation, but one need to be more careful with information and data we share online with them.

[MinMan]

Someone said that CEX like Binance exchange et al will in no distant future resembles our today's banks in how they treat customers but there is hardly any thing that can be done about them because they are fast becoming a necessary evil.

I think they are already far worse than banks. If your bank locks your account or seizes your funds, then in most countries you have legal protection and routes you can go down to have your account and your money returned to you. If an exchange locks your account or seizes your funds, wave goodbye to your coins. If a bank scams you or goes bankrupt, then your money is probably protected or insured. If an exchange scams you or goes bankrupt, wave goodbye to your coins.

Thankfully, centralized exchanges are not a necessarily evil. I've been involved with bitcoin for years, and actively buy, sell, trade, and spend it, and have never used a centralized exchange. With the ongoing growth of DEXs, both in terms of number and in terms of volume, centralized exchanges might be convenient, but they are not necessary.

You must have worked with banks that are much better than mine. I rather use binance over my bank any day of the week. Maybe they did share this data with Russians and that could be truth but I seriously doubt it's the truth, I believe that it is just a way of media bashing binance one way or another, they have done that plenty of times before. Why would Binance share data with Russia, what could they gain?

You think money would be good enough reason? These are the guys that make over a billion dollars a month (probably) and what could Russia offer to disrupt that? It is probably propaganda against crypto exchanges and I believe they are not even close to banks.

[Wimex]

You must have worked with banks that are much better than mine. I rather use binance over my bank any day of the week. Maybe they did share this data with Russians and that could be truth but I seriously doubt it's the truth, I believe that it is just a way of media bashing binance one way or another, they have done that plenty of times before. Why would Binance share data with Russia, what could they gain?

You think money would be good enough reason? These are the guys that make over a billion dollars a month (probably) and what could Russia offer to disrupt that? It is probably propaganda against crypto exchanges and I believe they are not even close to banks.

In my country banks weren't that good too, many disruptions or maintenance happens in their system and the service were unsatisfying that's why I prefer to do Transactions or p2p transactions in Binance. If this issue is true, this will put Binance in a bad image hopefully it's not. Many crypto users popular and top investors might be using Binance nowadays so they must protect their customer at all cost.

I agree with you, I am one of the people who frequently use binance to carry out their daily operations, and this news leaves me somewhat perplexed, since we all know well about the sanctions imposed by binance towards Russian citizens. These and legal companies with crypto assets worth more than $10,800 on the platform are subject to the limitations.

Even recently I saw a news that now this sanction escalated to the Russian elite, Binance commented that

Polina Kovaleva, the stepdaughter of Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and Elizaveta Peskova, the daughter of President Vladimir Putin's representative Dmitry Peskov, were among those excluded in the past two months.

They also indicated that they had blocked Kirill Malofeyev, the son of Konstantin Malofeyev, a Russian oligarch previously accused of violating US sanctions. Total cryptocurrency capitalization this week was $1.74 trillion.


And with these new sanctions, we just have to wait how it could affect the market.

Source: https://bitcoinist.com/binance-bans-accounts/

[pawanjain]

Reuters has published an investigation where they claim that Binance worked tightly with Russian government, including helping them track donations to opposition politicians

Binance made a statement where they denied all allegations


When you are using a centralized exchange, you are trading your privacy for convenience. Assume that everything that you share with them - your ID, your address, your photo, all your transactions and trading data, will be shared with third parties. It can be your own government, foreign government, private companies and so on. And you never know what consequences it can have, maybe someone will decide to "cancel" or prosecute you over a transaction you did 10 years ago?

The moment when we turn on the internet our privacy is getting compromised here and there.
There are logs stored for everything on the internet and with just few clicks the expert minds can invade our privacy.
It's as simple as that. When we register ourselves on such centralized exchanges everything is getting stored on their servers.
This includes our IP address, browser information, OS information, cookies, cache etc... This is when the user hasn't even done the KYC yet.
So much of useful information already. It can be used to easily manipulate and gain control at some level in our devices.
We can't even imagine what they can do when they have all our info from KYC we do.
Nobody can be trusted on the internet and this includes centralized exchanges like Binance too.
So I wouldn't be shocked if they sell our data to Russia or some random 3rd party. We have to deal with it.

[Victorik]

That's exactly why I am wearied of these exchanges asking for too many information to get you KYC'd. The internet is a marketplace and these information can get into the wrong hands.
It is possible these information were hacked from Binance site, I don't see Binance leaking these information themselves.

[o_e_l_e_o]

They put several unnecessary layers in if you try to move any funds outside of the platform - I got to the "final step" at one point and they froze the funds, which involved a very nerve racking experience waiting for support chat staff to answer why.

Standard behavior for Binance. Open an account - no problem. Deposit fiat - no problem. Trade that fiat for various coins, and then trade those coins back and forth for weeks - no problem. Try to withdraw your money - you've been flagged for "suspicious activity", your account is locked, your coins are frozen, we demand ridiculous KYC.

On top of all that they used a fixed fee system, which had not been updated since Bitcoin was worth much less, so they had extortionate charges for low level transactions, again this was designed to capture users and keep them on the platform.

Or to trick newbies in to using their centralized scam chains.

Why would Binance share data with Russia, what could they gain?

Both direct payment and being allowed to continue to operate in Russia. There is no limit to how low some companies will sink or who they will sell out when there are profits to be made.

[Doan9269]

Lets not make a tragedy of what Binance did or might not did. Every time you flash personal data, you should take responsibility, that your data will be provided or used against you. Binance covertly cooperates with every country and finance institution. These bastards will provide everything to cover their asses.

Am hearing such claim on Binance the second time, first was on the allegations that it involve in revealing Ukrainians privacy and block some transaction while an alleged claim was laid on Binance before time to have place sanction Russia in other to fight in support for Ukraine thereby contributing to enforcing the saction over Russia.

Binance sharing its users information to Russia is a very big blow and woe on them. Intriguing and sharing People’s privacy online is a big cyber crime that shouldn’t be condoned. 

If found yourself among the affected one what would you do? absolutely nothing and there's nothing you can take as evidence or weapon to fight against the government, because as individuals you lack the jurisdiction in fighting a strong exchange like Binance not to talk of filing a suit against the government which is apparently impossible, the only safety rile to play here is to avoid centralized exchanges in their entirety.