'Rogue' Shopify employees may have stolen customer data from 200 merchants

• Two Shopify employees may have exposed customers’ names, email and postal addresses, and order details from 200 merchants, the Canadian e-commerce giant said on Tuesday.
• There is no evidence that any data taken by the “rogue” customer support workers has been used, Shopify said.
• Shopify is working with the FBI and other international agencies to investigate the theft, it said.

Two "rogue" Shopify employees tried to steal transaction records from merchants and may have exposed customer data, the online payment platform said on Tuesday.

The employees may have taken customer data including names, email and postal addresses, and order details, the Canadian e-commerce giant said. Sensitive personal and financial information, such as full payment card details, was not accessed, it added.

The incident involved data from less than 200 merchants, who the company has notified. More than 1 million merchants use Shopify to sell their goods online.

The company said there was no evidence that the data had been used, but that it was still in the "early stages" of its investigation. Shopify was working with the FBI and other international crime agencies, it said.

The theft wasn't caused by any "technical vulnerability" in the platform, Shopify said in its statement. It described the employees as two "rogue" members of its support team.

The company immediately terminated the employees' access to the Shopify network and referred the incident to law enforcement, it said.

Shopify didn't confirm when the incident took place — just that it became aware of it "recently."

But a customer email sent by 100% Pure, a skincare cosmetics merchant that uses Shopify, said hackers took data on September 15, Bloomberg reported.

Shopify said: "We don't take these events lightly at Shopify. We have zero tolerance for platform abuse and will take action to preserve the confidence of our community and the integrity of our product."

In July, Shopify reported second-quarter earnings 97% higher than the year before, as online sales boomed during the pandemic.