Masatoshi Kumagai, the head of GMO Internet Group, has told X users that he will file criminal complaints against them unless they delete their posts by a set time, after a breach at a group company's service for automated FX trading. Some of the accounts he targeted had not posted the leaked information, and the threats have drawn questions on X.
GMO Internet Group said it was aware of the reaction. "We understand that we are receiving various opinions," the company said, without giving further detail.
Breach and leak
On October 27, an attacker who had gained unauthorized access to "Onamae.com Desktop Cloud" — a virtual private server service used for automated FX trading — published information said to belong to the service's users, after GMO refused a demand for money. GMO said it had confirmed that the published information contains content that differs from the facts.
The Yomiuri Shimbun reported that a person whose name and other details matched the published information said in an interview that they had never used GMO's cloud service and that the content was "mostly nonsense."
GMO has asked people not to spread the information, citing the risk of secondary harm such as privacy violations and fraud, and said it intends to take legal action against anyone who circulates it maliciously. On its official X account, the company has sent replies directly to accounts that posted the material, asking them to delete it.
Threats reach accounts that posted no data
Kumagai posted similar demands from his own X account, telling people who spread the information that he would file a criminal complaint if they had not deleted it by a specified time. But some of the accounts he replied to had not posted the leaked information itself, prompting questions about how the targets were chosen.
One X account quoted GMO's post asking spreaders to delete the material and commented on how the company was handling the matter. Kumagai replied: "If you do not delete it by the specified time, I will file a criminal complaint. I am serious. I will not allow anyone to spread victims' information for fun."
The reply drew responses asking where the victim's information was in the post, and saying that the account was not the one spreading it.
The source also refers to remarks about a person's family makeup that became a point of contention. It does not give the content of those remarks or say who made them.