Cyber criminals steal frequent flyer miles:
Jill Frankfort, a teacher from Boston, accumulated 152,500 frequent flyer miles over the years. Her goal was to spend them on a special vacation When she tried to redeem them for an international trip, they were no longer in her American Airlines account. Frankfort reached out to the airline, and was told that someone accessed her account. Her 152,500 miles were stolen.
In May 2017, a couple completely unrelated to her had flown from New Delhi, India, to Doha, Qatar, in business class with her miles Assuming that her miles were secure she rarely checked her account. Unbeknownst to her, back in October 2016, someone had changed the email associated with her AAdvantage account At the time, the change triggered a notification from American Airlines.
But the alert landed in her spam mailbox 20 months later, when she contacted American Airlines, it was too late. All her miles were already used. Fortunately, American Airlines agreed to return 25,000 of her miles as a gesture of goodwill.
You can prevent a similar incident from happening to you.
Follow these simple steps:
- Check your accounts frequently
- Change your password regularly
- Don’t use the same email address and password across multiple sites
Visit https://staging.cybermaterial.com/travelers
