Coupang breach affecting 33.7 million users raises data protection questions

Coupang disclosed a major data breach impacting 33.7 million customer accounts after a former employee with retained access keys accessed customer data from overseas servers between June 24 and November 8; exposed fields include names, phone numbers, emails, delivery address books, and purchase histories. The breach went undetected for months, raises significant re-identification and spear-phishing risks, may trigger record fines under South Korea's data protection laws, and the report advocates deploying enterprise-grade encryption and key management to mitigate such risks.