Gate’s dispute with user @jheioff over an alleged account takeover has taken a sharper turn after the exchange’s Chinese-language official account posted a screenshot it said was meant to prove the user’s personal data had already been severely leaked outside the platform.
The user, who says he lost about $1.7 million in crypto assets, has been publicly arguing with Gate for nearly a month over account risk controls, identity verification and liability. On Aug. 3, the conflict expanded again when Gate published the image alongside its latest response.
Although much of the screenshot was obscured, visible fields appeared to show a wide range of personal and device-related data, including name, ID number, date of birth, gender, zodiac sign, phone number, area code, QQ, IMEI, email address, home address and records linked to the same address. The post quickly drew criticism from social media users who questioned why an exchange would display the structure and scope of a disputed user’s leaked personal information on a public account while legal and liability questions were still unresolved.
@jheioff later responded, saying: “My heart is completely dead... Gate has doxxed me too, a naked threat.” What had started as a dispute over whether the exchange’s controls failed has now widened into a public-relations and privacy controversy over how user data was handled in public.
Gate says lawyers are involved and evidence has been collected
In its X post, Gate said it had assigned lawyers to work with police on the information leak investigation and on tracing hacker funds. The exchange said its legal team had already obtained a large amount of key information and evidence.
Gate accused the user of refusing to allow its lawyers and legal team to get involved, saying he had not focused on tracing the hacker and had instead pressured the platform through what Gate described as distorted facts and public opinion. On that basis, Gate said it would “skip” the user and arrange for its lawyers to intervene directly.
The exchange also said it had obtained key evidence showing the user’s personal information had been severely exposed outside the platform, including IMEI data that Gate said it did not possess itself. According to Gate, the relevant materials would be handed directly to police by its lawyers.
That claim is what Gate tried to support with the screenshot. The decision to post it, however, became part of the controversy almost immediately. Critics questioned whether it was appropriate for the exchange to show the extent of a user’s personal-data exposure to a public audience of hundreds of thousands while a live dispute with that user was still underway.
Several KOLs also said the image suggested Gate had queried the user’s information through a “social engineering database” associated with gray-market data channels.
Gate says the user missed a four-day warning window
Gate said again in its latest statement that even if the user’s external personal data had already been heavily leaked, the platform still provided four days of mobile alerts, SMS notices and withdrawal-delay protection. It argued that the user failed to act during that window.
The exchange said the issue was not, as the user had put it, that the platform expected someone to watch email around the clock. Gate said that during the same period, two of the user’s Alipay accounts had also been leaked or accessed, but that did not trigger concern. Based on that, Gate said the user had shown serious negligence and that the case could not be reduced to simply missing an email.
Gate also repeated that if a judicial investigation ultimately finds the loss was caused by a platform system problem, or by review errors at Gate, the exchange is willing to “take 100% of the corresponding responsibility.” At the current stage, though, Gate continues to deny that the incident stemmed from an internal information leak or a systemic security flaw.
How the $1.7 million was withdrawn remains the core dispute
The case was first made public on July 8. @jheioff said that after not logging into Gate for several days, he returned to find roughly $1.7 million in assets had been fully withdrawn from his account. He said the account had already been protected by phone verification and Google Authenticator, but those safeguards were still removed or modified step by step by the attacker.
The central dispute is still the same: how facial recognition and manual review were passed.
The user insists that his phone and device remained with him during the relevant period, that he did not make any security-setting changes, and that he never completed the live facial verification Gate described. He also released a video that he said showed that during one of the alleged facial-verification events, he was holding his child and was not operating Gate at all.
From that, the user argues that the attacker may have broken through Gate’s identity checks using forged ID-holding images, non-live videos and Alipay data obtained elsewhere. If that account is accurate, the issue would extend beyond leaked personal data and raise questions about whether the exchange’s facial recognition, manual review and high-value withdrawal controls were effectively useless.
Gate disputes that version. The exchange said the applicant not only passed liveness checks and multiple verification steps, but also submitted a screen recording of historical Alipay transactions that closely matched the account. Gate’s assessment is that the attacker may have controlled the user’s outside accounts, device or full identity data, rather than exploiting a Gate system vulnerability alone.
The user has continued to demand the full facial-verification video and related risk-control records from Gate. He also questioned why the exchange at one stage said the relevant footage had been preserved, only to later refuse disclosure on the grounds that biometric data could not be stored. Those materials have not yet been publicly verified by police or by an independent third party.
Criminal filing was opened on July 17, but evidence disputes continue
The case formally entered criminal filing procedures on July 17, and another argument followed over judicial evidence requests.
Gate said that after learning the case had been filed, it guided the user and the investigators to send inquiry documents. When it first received the file set on July 22, Gate said it found missing materials, some expired documents, and contact details using a personal email address and phone number, which meant the platform could not directly confirm authenticity. Gate added that although supplementary materials were later received, it still needed to verify the investigators’ identities through video or other methods.
The user gave a different account. He said he had already submitted the case-filing decision, police identity documents and judicial evidence-request paperwork as requested, but that Gate repeatedly changed the format and verification requirements. According to him, the exchange first asked for PDFs, then asked for retransmission over virus concerns, and later switched to voice or video verification, delaying the delivery of key materials in practice.
Both sides are now accusing the other of failing to cooperate with the investigation. Gate says the user has focused on public pressure instead of helping lawyers trace the hacker. The user says Gate is trying to shift responsibility for platform risk-control issues onto the victim and is using “external personal-data leakage” to avoid the central question of how forged materials passed review.