This smartwatch company was hit by a data breach. Here’s what we know

Sometimes it feels like you can’t turn on your computer without seeing news of another data breach. One of the latest victims is Polar, the smartwatch company responsible for gadgets like the Polar Pacer Pro and Polar Vantage V3. Fun fact: Polar is also one of Henry Cavill’s favorite fitness trackers.

The attack began over a week ago. On October 11, Polar released a statement on its website regarding a “security incident” affecting its online store. According to the statement, the US online store was “subject to disruptions of varying degrees,” but only a few accounts were compromised. This is good news, as the attack was likely aimed at making fraudulent purchases, not the theft of health data.

Polar explained: “The data breach affected only a small proportion of customers on Polar’s ​​US online store. The breach does not apply to other customer data stored by Polar. We would like to emphasize that Polar Flow users’ data was not compromised during the attack.”

The company also said that users do not need to take any action. Anyone with a compromised account has already been contacted.

Polar says the how and why of the attack is still under investigation. Until the company has answers, all login and registration functions of the online shop have been switched off. This doesn’t mean the shop isn’t usable – you just need to checkout with a guest account. You just need to wait a while to log in to your store account.

Attacks like this can be disturbing, especially because they circumvent any preventative measures you can take yourself. Two-factor authentication doesn’t mean much if criminals can get the information directly from a database. Luckily it doesn’t look so bad this time.