In a digital age where online transactions are commonplace for luxury goods, the security of personal data is paramount. Patrick_y's original post brought to light critical security breaches affecting prominent pre-owned watch platforms Chrono24 and WatchFinder. This article synthesizes the community's response, offering crucial insights into the nature of these breaches and their potential implications for collectors.
Chrono 24 and WatchFinder have both lost copious amounts of consumer information both due to security breeches. A lot of this information is quite extensive, featuring full names, addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, financial information, bank account numbers, Tax ID numbers or Social Security Numbers, and possibly even IP addresses. Some also include personal notes and details of watches in the client's possession, watches for sale by the client, and watches on the client's "wishlist." Considering some watch collectors are prominent individuals, this is a valuable spreadsheet of information.
All clients who have a Chrono24 and WatchFinder account are advised to do a security inventory, consider changing their passwords, to monitor their credit cards, and be on the lookout for suspicious activity or identity theft. Hopefully this data does not end up on the black market or on the dark web; where information brokers will likely sell the information to criminals who will then act upon it.
EDIT: 03-OCT-2022 According to one of our members below who contacted Chrono24, Chrono24 responded to say that their "MailChimp" server was the one that was hacked. The MailChimp server carries names and email addresses but no financial information. And at this time Chrono24 has indicated they do not believe that financial information was breached. Still! We need to be careful! Thank you to our member Spangles who contacted Chrono24 on our behalf for more details.
