GMO Internet Group said on the 6th that it has begun contacting users individually about compensation for losses from unauthorized trading, after a breach at a service run by a subsidiary. The breach hit "Onamae.com Desktop Cloud," a service for foreign exchange margin trading — FX, in which investors trade currencies on borrowed funds — and unauthorized trades caused financial damage in users' FX accounts.
GMO has already said it will pay every service user a flat 5,000 yen in compensation money and cover losses caused by the unauthorized trades. The company did not say how many accounts were affected or how large the losses are.
The breach has drawn attention to how much responsibility a platform carries when an intruder trades in a customer's account. GMO's decision to cover trading losses goes beyond restoring access to the service.
Coverage of the case in Japan has focused on the scale of individual damage. One man told reporters his account balance had fallen to 47 yen and that he lost 500,000 yen in 45 seconds, saying he felt betrayed.