Data breaches of thousands of ManoMano customer data records, reportedly extracted from Zendesk

ManoMano, presumably keen to keep some of its customer service costs low, chose to work with a provider in Tunisia. This provider was the victim of data theft from one of its agents' workstations. We tested this call center and found it to be poorly organized, making it difficult to understand why a unicorn company would choose it. Telephone lines ringing into the void, IVR, voice server not working...

ManoMano was therefore forced to organize the urgent repatriation of its entire customer service department to ADM Value in Madagascar. It also called on Burson, a renowned press agency, to try to limit the negative buzz caused by these shortcomings, which are not the first: its Manodvisors, apparently paid or reimbursed in products to write positive reviews, had already given a glimpse of the French marketplace's practices. 

Zendesk involved. 37.8 million user accounts compromised and data put up for sale

ManoMano officially mentions “thousands of customers” affected, but the reality could be much more worrying. On BreachForums, a popular forum for cybercriminals, a hacker calling himself “Indra” claims to have compromised 37.8 million user accounts, representing approximately 43 GB of data. The haul also includes 935,000 after-sales service tickets and more than 13,500 attachments, covering databases from several European countries: France, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom, and Germany. The data was reportedly extracted from Zendesk, the customer support platform used by ManoMano. When contacted by us, one of the co-founders (Christian Raisson) and the executives in charge (Claire Morvan and Eloïse Nahon) declined to comment. Le service client omnicanal de ManoMano est équipé de la plateforme Diabolocom, connectée à Zendesk. Marc Bussienne ex-directeur de la relation client de ManoMano détaille dans la vidéo qui suit les raisons de cette architecture.

In the age of AI and chatbots, why would anyone need a comprehensive customer service department with advisors? Because packages are delivered late, refunds are delayed or not issued at all—that's the reality of retail, and even more so for some e-merchants.

Recently, Free was fined a total of €42 million by the CNIL following a data breach.

Read more in Spotlight, En-Contact, issue 139.

NB: Marc Bussienne is no longer employed by ManoMano but by LVMH Client Services.