Paytm Mall denies 3.4 million users’ data breach

Strongly denying the breach, Paytm Mall spokesperson said the data of its users is completely safe and claims related to a data leak in the year 2020 are completely false and unsubstantiated.
Paytm. Image used for representational purpose only. ( File Photo)
Paytm. Image used for representational purpose only. ( File Photo)

BENGALURU: Two years after Paytm Mall, the e-commerce arm of Paytm, reportedly suffered a data breach, Firefox Monitor, an online service developed by Mozilla, has confirmed the data breach on its website. However, Paytm Mall denied the breach and said the data of its users are “completely safe”.

In August 2020, a report claimed that 3.4 million accounts were compromised during the breach. At that time, Paytm Mall denied claims and said there was no hack at all. But again, on Tuesday, Firefox Monitor cites a data breach and said, “Once the breach was discovered and verified, it was added to our database on July 26, 2022.”

Phone numbers, email addresses, date of birth, genders, income levels and geographic locations are said to be compromised. Firefox Monitor said the breach data was provided by Have I Been Pwned, a website that allows one to search across multiple breaches.

On Twitter, Have I Been Pwned said data covered 3.4 million unique email addresses and 77% were already in @haveibeenpwned. Firefox Monitor said a website data breach happens when cyber criminals steal, copy or expose personal information from online accounts. It can sometimes take months or years for credentials exposed in a data breach to appear on the dark web. Breaches get added to its database as soon as they have been discovered and verified, Firefox Monitor said.

Strongly denying the breach, Paytm Mall spokesperson said the data of its users is completely safe and claims related to a data leak in the year 2020 are completely false and unsubstantiated.

“A fake dump uploaded on the platform haveibeenpwned.com appears to wrongly alert of a data breach on Firefox browser. We are getting in touch with Firefox and the platform to resolve the matter,” the spokesperson said.

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