Major cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase said it mistakenly told around 125,000 customers that their two-factor authentication settings had been changed. The email and SMS notifications were sent due to an "internal error" and were not the result of a hack, the company told CNBC.
Coinbase sent the false alert to users over the course of 82 minutes on Friday. It followed up with a second email stating that the message was sent by mistake. Coinbase later wrote on Twitter that a "notification delivery issue" was to blame and that it would "continue to work to gain back the trust of every one of our customers who was impacted by those notifications."
Our teams immediately recognized the problem and worked as quickly as possible to ensure these erroneous notifications were stopped and the underlying issue fixed.
— Coinbase (@coinbase) August 28, 2021
However, the issue appeared to cause confusion and concern among users, with some suspecting their accounts had been hacked. At least one person said they sold crypto worth around $60,000 because they were worried they'd lose it otherwise.
That's an understandable concern in the wake of a CNBC report from last week, in which some Coinbase customers claimed their accounts were hacked and they couldn't contact employees for help. The company has since said it's rolling out voice and live chat support options.