Point thieves, here are the stories of Edward and how over 250,000 avios were stolen from him

In the past few days, a TFC reader contacted me about. Tell me about the nightmare he is experiencing, a situation previously reported to me by another reader, but in that case it was resolved after some vicissitude and a lot of patience.

Unfortunately, this is not the first and will not be the last such case, because miles as we often and frequently say in our articles, are worth money (and lots of it).

Here is Edward's story

On December 31, I get about 1,000 emails (all spam from various newsletters) within 1 hour....

I don't pay too much attention to it and slowly start checking for important emails as well.

I don't plan to spend New Year's Eve there, so after a little while I stop and enjoy the evening.

Yesterday (January 2 ed.) I find that one of the emails is in fact important! Hidden among the thousands of spam and arriving (obviously not coincidentally) at the same time was an email from British Airways warning that my executive club account was linked to a Qatar privilege club account.

Only unfortunately I don't have a Qatar account. Needless to say I go to log in to my BA account and find that all my 250k Avios have been transferred to a Qatar account.

Also, all my personal details remained the same except for the email associated with my account, which became a very strange email CHER******21@outlook.com.

Noticing the fraud, I called Ba and Qatar who opened an investigation. Hopefully we will get the avios back, otherwise more award travel this year.

The role of airlines

Let's be clear, we're not talking about shopping at a store with cloned cards, since miles can only be used to buy tickets (or slightly more) It is very easy for carriers to intercept the wrongdoer, even if the points are bounced from one user to another. You just have to want it. There have been several intrusions into companies' loyalty programs in recent months, and many have run for cover, but in this particular case I think it is clear that there has been a scam, well organized and thought out to the smallest detail.

Spam to fill the useless inbox, activity put in place on a hot day like December 31, I'm willing to bet that Edward is not the only one who has been cleaned out in this scheme.

How to protect yourself

Certainly two-factor authentication is a system that helps so much, but not many programs adopt it. Of the ones I use, Flying Blue, Singapore Airlines, Qatar have it, and it should be a system on all cards instead. ITA Airways, which has had problems in recent months, does not have it, British Airways does not have it, and Emirates does not have it.

My 5 tips to protect yourself in this situation are:

1. Use an email that is not "easily" identifiable
2. Do not post too many details of one's accounts/tickets on social/web (yes I say that I post everything, but it is a controlled risk)
3. Do not use the same password on all profiles
4. Install the loyalty program app and activate notifications
5. Check your account status on a regular basis

In conclusion

Miles are worth money, so there are those who try to steal them; what happened to Edward could happen to anyone, so we better be careful.

• Avios
• executive club

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