I’ve nothing to add to the BA hacking saga, but feel free to add your comments here

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• BoB McBob says:

  28 Mar28 March 18:27

  Managed to login to mine after a password changs, zero points left, on the statement it says:

  Ex-Gratia – Manual Avios Adjustment -XXXXXX

• sandgrounder says:

  28 Mar28 March 19:57

  I feel sorry for everyone who has been inconvenienced. This seems to have been managed pretty badly, on the communication front at the very least. I am sure that it will all be sorted out very soon.

  I must confess that part of me wants this to drag on for about a month so I get a clearer run at award availabilty for next Easter. I feel very guilty about this. Does it make me a bad person? 🙂 🙂

• Rome77 says:

  28 Mar28 March 20:15

  Finally F availability has appeared for a flight I am doing next week, currently booked in J. I had been locked out but managed to reset my password and log in. No Avios present. On hold to BAEC for around an hour before an agent informed me that I have to wait “about two weeks” before my Avios are reinstated and I can make any Avios bookings! Not much help when I’m flying next week…absolutely shocking! 🙁

• Joeninety says:

  28 Mar28 March 22:07

  My a/c has also been locked. However, the password used for my Executive club account is NOT used for any other accounts or accessed via award wallet or similar. I do access executive club via browsers and via the BA app.

• Akhil Gupta says:

  28 Mar28 March 22:29

  I got my account back a few days ago

  Had to speak to Exec Club. They sent me a password reset link. Then had to change my registered email address using another link. Then had to call them again. Then I finally managed to login and my avios are back.

• James Hartman says:

  28 Mar28 March 22:34

  I was locked out of my account. However, after resetting my password on ba.com, I can see my current bookings and BAEC Silver status without.

  However, I have today booked a trip to the USA in February 2016 with a colleague using Avios and an AMEX Companion Voucher with no trouble at all, despite my BAEC account currently showing a zero Avios balance. The girl I spoke to on the phone (for which I was only on hold for about 5 minutes) was extremely helpful and apologetic; in all fairness, it’s not her fault.

  I have just one message for BA: I understand and appreciate what you have done in attempting to protect customers’ Avios, but surely it doesn’t take much effort to let hose affected customers know by email as soon as you have done it, and not nearly 24 hours afterwards. BA has seriously annoyed a heck of a lot of its most faithful and regular customers by this, so they need to learn form this otherwise they will lose a LOT of business.

• Tim Millea says:

  29 Mar29 March 04:39

  Just to add four out of five family members had our accounts zeroed. I had to reset my password to find this out. I have had no email from BA and I do my own, i.e. by hand, spam filtering. I have also heard from friends the same.
  I assume there is evidence of a hack and BA has locked down all accounts as a precaution. Still, I would have liked to have heard it from BA first.

  • John says:

    29 Mar29 March 07:16

    They definitely haven’t locked down all accounts because I made an Avios booking last night (and there’s an automated survey email in my inbox asking me to rate my experience using the site!).

    Both my BAEC and Avios accounts are on award wallet and both were updated with earned points on Friday. I did however change my password from a PIN to a combination of words and numbers before Christmas.

    Perhaps the other site that was hacked fell victim prior to that password change and so, even if my username is on the villains’ list, their script was unable to gain access.

    Feel for the people who’ve been locked out and also BA. But baffled that the airline can’t manage to post an explanation on its website for all Avios collectors to see. Really poor cust serv.

    • John says:

      29 Mar29 March 07:39

      Though I should add that, like someone above, part of my profile bas been deleted, and there’s a message asking me to complete it again (without explaining what happened to the original data, including payment card info).

• Dave says:

  29 Mar29 March 08:56

  You have nothing to add is that because you were encouraging people to use AW and now that maybe the cause of people having their accounts put into audit ?

  • Alan says:

    29 Mar29 March 09:20

    ?? but it’s clearly nothing to do with AW given the number of folk who have been affected and don’t even use it!

  • Jason says:

    29 Mar29 March 09:36

    I was one of those encouraged to use AW, and both accounts, seem unaffected even after changing the passwords on both accounts.

  • Graeme says:

    29 Mar29 March 11:29

    Dave – that’s not helpful, or right – and IIRC you have form for this.

  • Rob says:

    29 Mar29 March 15:43

    Nope, I have nothing to add because I don’t have any additional information! It is quite clear that there has NOT been any sort of data breach from AW. The only issue is whether having your account accessed from outside the UK by AW may have flagged it up as suspicious.

    AW is your best insurance policy against getting hacked, because as long as you run it daily you will see any drop in your points balance within 24 hours.

    For people who are unaware of the scale of this sort of behaviour, there have been 1,173 malicious attempts in the last two weeks to access the Head for Points database – there is a little counter which pops up whenever I log in. These are all robot driven.

  • Thomas says:

    29 Mar29 March 17:38

    Nothing to with with AW, so calm down Dave !!

  • Nick says:

    29 Mar29 March 20:19

    Would you jump off a cliff Dave

    • Cherry says:

      30 Mar30 March 08:52

      Would you let a 3rd party app access your bank account just so you can keep an eye on your balance? You wouldn’t so why would you allow AW to have all your login details.

      • Rob says:

        30 Mar30 March 09:17

        There are third party apps which track your bank details for you!

        As I said before, it is a trade off. I would rather have AW tell me my balances once a day (I need to see what is posting from flights, promos etc anyway) and so let me see any movements.

        It is VERY hard to use Avios fraudulently. Unless you book a flight to depart within a few hours, the chance of being spotted (and nicked at the airport) is too high. Booking a hotel room is even worse as the police know where to find you! The big problems came from programmes that let you redeem for e-vouchers (Amex still does this). Hack account, redeem for instant Amazon code, order goods for same day delivery to a safe drop-off address, all done.

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