After stories surfaced of StockX users getting emails to change their passwords, first reported by Engadget, the self-proclaimed “stock market of things” said they were sent as a precautionary measure.
In a statement emailed to FN, the company said, “StockX was recently alerted to suspicious activity potentially involving our platform. Out of an abundance of caution, we implemented a security update and proactively asked our community to update their account passwords. We are continuing to investigate. As a leading technology company, the privacy of our StockX customers is of paramount importance to us.”
Engadget senior editor Edgar Alvarez called StockX out on Twitter for the way the company informed its users of a potential security breach. “Is this StockX telling me they got hacked? smells fishy,” he wrote on the social media platform.
Sneaker YouTube standout Jacques Slade, whose Twitter handle is @kustoo, sent out a tweet to his 47,000 followers suggesting people on StockX update their passwords. One user reply suggested he was a victim of a hack.
“I got charged for a bid of 23,0000 dollars. I’m waiting on the return but my bank has been overdrafted because of it. Crazy,” wrote Twitter user @shawnpmuth.
In June, StockX announced it had reached unicorn status after raising $110 million in a Series C funding round, pushing its value to upwards of $1 billion. The company also announced that CEO Josh Luber would step down from his post and would be replaced by eBay’s SVP of the Americas, Scott Cutler. (StockX said that Luber, however, will serve on the firm’s executive leadership team and board of directors.)
Luber spoke with FN after the announcement about what it means to hit unicorn status.
“It’s humbling to be in that category. It still feels like Day 0 regardless of what the numbers say. The opportunity in front of us is really the interesting part of this. We’re just starting to scratch the surface on how big and powerful this model can be to not only the resale customers but also the retail customers,” Luber told FN. “Sneakers have had big growth in the last couple of years, so there are other sneaker marketplaces and business that have grown around that. But for us, we’re converging resale and retail, which is the distinction between us and the other players here. We don’t look at the $6 billion resale industry but the $100 billion retail industry, so that’s why it feels like we’re three guys in a garage and not a billion-dollar unicorn company.”