Imagine a situation, in which a big company is happy to work with me. I get super excited as my budget is super stretched and then bad stuff happens. This post is about NotEnoughTech and Gearbest.

Sometime before xmas 2018 I have received an email about my website and potential cooperation with Gearbest.com. If you not aware, it positions itself among e-commerce sites like Aliexpress and Banggood. I’m a small fish in the online world, but I must have made a couple of biggers splashes to spark their interest.

The deal was very simple and totally ok with me and the profile of NotEnoughTech. I get store credit and creative freedom in exchange for writing about their product and producing traceable links to review my performance. While I would get extra affiliate payment for each order made, no money traded hands and I was in charge of filling up my basket.

I belive it’s a fair and honest partnership in which I select items that will perform well, therefore my projects will end up with a recommendation, and are not biased by listing affiliate links. If you believe, I’m a corporate shill for doing so – let me know.

Copyright issues

If you follow GreatScott (I do, you probably should too), you might have heard about a really badly handled copyright dispute. I felt really uncomfortable at this point, as I – a creator, was about to endorse a company that let down another creator by reusing their content without a permission.

The dispute has been resolved, but not before the entire thing blew up online. It’s a shame that the dispute has not been handled better by Gearbest, but ultimately the agreement before the creator and the company has been reached and Gearbest promised to do better next time.

It put my mind at ease, until I read about..

Gearbest Data Breach

Articles started to surface online in regards to accounts and details being leaked online. This is never good news. No company want’s that kind of attention. Unfortunately, details of orders between 01-15.03.2019 have been left unprotected and as such could be a subject to a data breach.

Very often in such situations news portals are quick to jump the click-bait train, before the actual information is verified. As you can see a redacted version of the article is not as exciting as the initial story of a potential data leak from 2017.

Example

Gearbest issued a Facebooks statement which assures that the security issue has been resolved.

Update of a data breach incident happened to Gearbest Posted by Gearbest on Friday, 15 March 2019

I own the account with Gearbest since 21/07/2018 (date of my first order with them). I also placed an order in the same time range as the alleged “leak” took place. Therefore I received an email today informing me about the security concern.

Dear Customer, Thank your recent order on Gearbest. Customers’ information is our priority, and we work hard to ensure the protection of such information by implementing all available methods in the market. In this context, we have found out that some orders information for orders placed between March 1st 2019 till March 15th, 2019 could have been compromised. We have already fixed the issue and your personal information and account information are safe and secured. We remain at your entire disposal for any questions you may have. Best Regards

GearbestGearbest Email

My email address has not been compromised according to the popular pwnage sites.

Today (17th March), a new statement has been released outlining the scale of the potential vulnerability.

Latest Update of the Data Breach Incident Posted by Gearbest on Sunday, 17 March 2019

Conclusion

My transparency and being honest with my readers is more important than any possible deals and revenue opportunities. I wanted to use this post to clarify my stand, share some additional insight into the partnership and how I feel about recent Gearbest related stories.

I will continue my partnership with Gearbest unless I will receive strong feedback from you guys against it. I’d love your opinion, so comment on social media or in this Reddit thread.