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Has the Lloyds Avios Rewards credit card suffered a major data breach?

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There were many reports on Head for Points yesterday, in the comments, from readers who have seen fake transactions appearing on their Lloyds Avios Rewards credit cards.  It appears that there has been a major attack of card fraud on the Lloyds Avios product.

A Flyertalk poster picked up the comments on here and mentioned it on that site, and there were more reported issues.

There has been no official statement from Lloyds, it seems, which is odd.  If they have been trying to keep it quiet, it is now very much out of the bag.

If you have the Lloyds Avios credit cards, I strongly suggest you check your online statement immediately for potential fraudulent transactions.

Here are a few of the comments:

Via HfP readers:

“About a week ago my wife’s Lloyds Avios Amex card was used fraudulently by someone over in New York for a few different things so we called Lloyds to talk about this and get the card cancelled and a replacement sent out. Logged into her account yesterday to find that my supplementary Amex was also used fraudulently earlier this week, also in New York. As my card has been sitting in a drawer at home and my wife’s has been in her purse the whole time, certainly haven’t been nicked and cloned or anything like that.

When speaking to Lloyds last night, they said that they were currently getting thousands of calls a day as they were seeing a lot of fraud on specifically the Amex cards people had, with the vast majority of the activity being contactless transactions in the US (the one on my card was for $100 at a drug store).

Therefore it might be worth checking your accounts in you have those cards (or perhaps others) and haven’t done so recently just to make sure nothing dodgy going on. The guy we spoke to said that clearly there had been some issue somewhere but given the large quantity of it going on, it was clearly an issue somewhere else and not with us – slightly happy but obviously also concerning there’s a significant issue somewhere else in the system! Certainly explains why it took 25 minutes to get through to their fraud team…”

“I also had two cases of fraud on my Lloyds Amex in the US. Taken off no problem but annoying.”

“I got a text from Lloyds over the weekend asking if I was trying to pay for something in Albertson? As I’d never heard of the place I texted back no. Checked my account and there were six transactions all in New York State I didn’t recognise. Two in Office Depot, one in Babiesrus. Called Lloyds and all removed no problem but it did make me wonder how the card had been cloned, I really use it infrequently.”

“I had to ring them last night as I had a fraudulent transaction appear in my pending transactions. They need to wait until it clears to refund it. Apparently there were a few more attempts that were declined. It does look like there has been a serious breach of security somewhere.”

“I have the Lloyds Amex and mine was also used fraudulently in the USA last week! Very annoying as I’m out of the UK in Japan and Australia for a month and was planning to use it a lot!”

“My Lloyds Amex was used fraudulently to pay some car parking charges in the US. I think there is a huge data breach here with Lloyds – just hope they only lost card numbers and not all of our personal information. I spent two hours on the phone with Lloyds this week trying to sort it, they were blaming Amex for it, until I said I’d call Amex directly and ask, then they changed their mind.”

“Same for me – queued for 45 mins on Saturday afternoon to speak to the fraud team after my card was declined – there was an attempted US transaction on there. And spoke to a colleague this week with the Lloyds Avios Amex whose card had also stopped working. There’s clearly been a massive leak somewhere…”

“Lloyds Amex – four transactions in California, last weekend, before I spotted and got the card cancelled. No issue with the MasterCard…”

“In my case it was Lloyds Mastercard which was used for fraud transactions. 6 attempts and also for luxury shopping bags purchase through online. I have cancelled the card. Looks like a major data breach from Lloyds side and they are staying silent which is suprising, no communication to customer to be vigilant.”

“Exactly the same thing happened to both me and my partner this week with the Amex card! Mine was used in a California petrol station last Tuesday and then two days later she had her card (separate accounts) used in Chicago!! I think it must be a data breach.”

“Have to say me too! 2 days ago $105 at Staples in the US (California) as a contactless transaction on the AMEX. I’ve never put this card onto Paypal so can’t be them, suspect leak from lloyds/amex themselves due to the number of issues. They did mention on the phone also to me that they’ve seen loads of these over the past week.”

“Me too! Mine in Bakersfield, California. Foot Locker, Kohl’s…”

“+1 to the Lloyds Amex fraud. I had a transaction from Office Depot in California – a contactless payment of USD 105 (didn’t even know that a contactless payment could even be for so much). Appears to be a huge data breach here! Called the Lloyds Fraud team and they are credited the transaction. Amex has been blocked and will be re-issued. MC not affected apparently.”

“Interesting to hear of this! My Lloyds AmEx got stopped. I called them and the customer rep started nattering something about “big customer data breach with AmEx” and also something about PayPal. I tried to press him for more details but he sounded either clueless or evasive”

“Whoa this seems like a widespread issue. I thought the two fraudulent transactions on my Lloyds Amex was because I’d recently booked holiday stuff (flights/tours) on Bolivian and Vietnamese websites and thought maybe some of the sites weren’t secured. At the end of October my card was used twice on the same day – one for a transaction with Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority and another at a grocery store in Anaheim, CA.”

“My BA Amex was used fraudently 7 times in California earlier this week: FedEx, Target, T-Mobile for £800. Got a refund two days later. Impressed by Amex quick response to this annoying situation.”

“Its certainly not a case of card cloning in the sense that someone is copying a card you have handed over, my card has never been used and never left the house!  Attempted fraud took place in USA. I did think someone had cracked the amex code for generating card numbers and then getting lucky with card numbers that were active, but some of the comments say the fraud was taking place using contactless, so dunno. More like a big data breach – i guess in about 6 months time Lloyds will admit it. The reason my amex card was new and hadn’t been used was that it was a replacement for an old card that had also been stopped!!!!”

“I’ve had 4 transactions also in California on my Lloyds AmEx and none on the Mastercard in the last week. All small amounts (i.e sub $30).”

“..and another one – Jeez! My card was used twice in a USA sports goods store about 3 weeks ago. I’d only had the card for about a month. Again it was the Amex, they replaced the Amex card, said that the MC was not compromised. Interestingly, the transactions showed as “magnetic stripe” on the Lloyds app – all my uses had been chip and pin or contactless, so it seems that someone has copied the mag stripe.”

“And another one here. 45 mins on hold and they’ve removed the transactions.  Lloyds really need to make a statement on this. I really don’t trust them now.”

Via Flyertalk readers:

“Lloyds blocked my Amex card, but didn’t tell me about it until I rang them up.”

“Just adding a “Me Too” – the pattern seems to be US-based transactions within the last week or so, usually totalling no more than a couple of hundred dollars.  Given how many of us seem to have fallen victim at the same time, this seems like a massive data breach at either Lloyds or Amex…”

“Last weekend I tried to use the Avios Mastercard and it didn’t work, but the Amex worked at another store 10 mins later so I thought maybe the merchant had a broken card machine. Then I tried to use it 2 days ago and it didn’t work. I called Lloyds and they said they saw fraud and wanted to cancel the Amex but not the Mastercard! They said it was ‘some paypal partner’ that put a charge on the card and it got rejected. ( again nothing suspicious on my statement). When I said that I heard other card members were also affected, they said ‘we do not know about that.’ By this time I had had enough and told them to cancel and reissue both Avios cards, they are on the way to the address, so should get them soon (can already see them on internet banking).”

“This happened to me too. I’ve never used my Lloyds Amex card – I only use the Mastercard as I have a BA Amex card. Phoning them up cleared things up, but I had to wait on hold for 40 minutes to get through.  Two transactions on my statement: Toys ‘R’ Us and Best Buy, and both were in-store with a magnetic stripe. Impressive seeing as the card has never left my house since it came out of its envelope. This must be a hack or an internal security breach that they’ve not made public.”

As I said above, you should take a couple of minutes today to check your online statement and ensure that there is no evidence of card fraud on your Lloyds Avios Rewards credit card.


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Comments (150)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Genghis says:

    Potentially the biggest coverage of HfP and all from an OT comment…

    • the real harry1 says:

      despite the potential downside (newbies not bothering to read/ learn from previous articles & comments), bigger readership is better IMV as more brains = more tips & insights

    • Rob says:

      That article is very well written – if I’d not told you which was The Sun, The Telegraph or The Mail I doubt people would have guessed easily.

      • the real harry1 says:

        The Sun is not written by its readership 🙂

      • john says:

        If Lloyds not responsible for the breach, does that mean it is a data breach at Amex?

        • Rob says:

          There is a breach, clearly. In order to make a fake plastic card with functioning strip you need more data than just a card number.

    • Polly says:

      Or the day We lost our 3V cards!!

  • mark2 says:

    No fraudulent entries on my or my wife’s Lloyds Avios cards although they were used heavily in Seattle in June 17 (well Mastercard only once).

  • Richard says:

    Someone is buying an awful lot of stuff in Walgreens!

  • mark2 says:

    Don’t you have to tell Lloyds when you are going abroad?

    • Callum says:

      No.

    • CV3V says:

      You don’t have to, but they have an option on their website for telling them. I did this for a trip to Singapore, didn’t make any difference as they still blocked the card.

      Lloyds are claiming its only a few thousand cards affected.

      • the real harry1 says:

        somehow the hackers found a way of targeting HFP members

        • CV3V says:

          Exactly, and how on earth did Lloyds manage to quantify the number.

          The number came from someone at Radio 4 You and Yours who were considering doing a follow up on Monday, but i wonder if Lloyds are playing the number down to stop anymore bad press. I recall that 8 out 10 statistics are made up.

      • john says:

        A few years ago a colleague who travelled a lot (and told Lloyds he was going abroad) always used to get his cards blocked. They seem to ignore that you tell them. He changed to a competent bank after it happened too many times.

    • Arun T says:

      For what it’s worth – I have not been affected (yet). Thanks Rob for brining this to my attention, would have missed it otherwise as I rarely use it and wouldn’t have checked.

  • Ben Yarker says:

    I can’t believe the quote in the Sun that only 1% of people were effected. My partner and I both had our cards stopped due to freudulant charges… simple probablilty says that’s a 0.01% chance that both of us could get breached. With that and the sheer number of people who have sent a comment on HfP… I’m super amazed that we haven’t received an email from Lloyd’s to let us know what has happened!! So pissed with Lloyd’s, I’m happy I’m do not use them for my current account – possibly looking at closing this card.

    • Rob says:

      1% is what they are saying.

    • DontBuyIt says:

      No one believes anything in the Scum, I mean Sun. 2 Lloyds avios accounts here and no issues. I suddenly feel vindicated for going through my statements very carefully each month. I wonder how many frauds go unnoticed?

    • callum says:

      Except you can’t use “simple probability” as you don’t know the odds of you being affected (every card isn’t necessarily equally vulnerable), your partner being affected or whether being linked to someone else affected increases your probability of being affected.

      As to there being no email, I hardly think sending a mass email to thousands of unaffected people describing an incident they don’t yet understand is good business sense.

  • JamesB says:

    Just activated my new Lloyds avios today…what can I say!

    In light of issues I called to activate it…they were more than happy to do so which I found a little surprising.

    Tried to login to my account but message states site is down…who knows!

  • Aron says:

    Got damn OT comments!

    No doubt Lloyds will give a very vauge answer as to how this happened.

  • Anna says:

    Not Lloyds but Amex – OH applied for a supplementary card for me on his BAPP, the card that turned up was for my Amex gold account, so i’ve got 2 cards on that in my name now. He doesn’t know my password so can’t have logged onto that by accident. I need to speak to them as they’ve charged me £45 for the privilege!

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