Binance Offers Lifetime VIP Membership to KYC Leak Victims

Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced that it will offer a lifetime VIP membership to all its users affected by the recent Know Your Customer (KYC) images leak on the platform.

According to the official blog, currently Binance is “actively contacting all potential victims with […] guidance on privacy protection and restitution,” and highly recommends “affected users to apply for new identification documents in their respective region.” The post also states:

“We are compensating affected users with a lifetime Binance VIP membership, including preferential trading fees, support, and more services.”

When a hacker knows your customer

As Cointelegraph reported recently, Binance said that its investigation of a KYC data leak that occurred in the beginning of August is still ongoing. The exchange’s security and investigations team is purportedly trying to identify the source of KYC images similar to those leaked by an unidentified hacker.

Binance announced the leak on Aug. 7, stating that an unidentified individual threatened the platform and demanded 300 bitcoins (BTC) in exchange for withholding over 10,000 photographs of purported Binance KYC data.

Cryptocurrency exchanges often require users to submit an image of themselves presenting credentials in order to verify their identity.

Binance also states that some of the leaked images overlap with the images that were processed by a third party vendor the exchange contacted several times from early December 2018 to late February 2019.