We have our first example of Avios / Nectar fraud

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• Matarredonda says:

  6 Feb6 February 08:18

  Thanks Rob for highlighting.
  People with a lot of Avios going to need to be careful to avoid these scum stealing hard earned points which are now effectively money.

• Rich says:

  6 Feb6 February 08:19

  The point raised about linking to Nectar straight away to stop this is an interesting one.
  Does anyone know if in theory this would work and stop points being transferred anywhere other than the two accounts?

• Stu says:

  6 Feb6 February 08:20

  It occurred to me that if you were to un-link and re-link your Nectar account 3 times after the initial linking, that would trigger the 4 link annual limit and thus prevent anyone from linking another Nectar account for 12 months?

  Not sure if the limit of 4 linking per annum applies to different accounts though?

  I appreciate this would tie you in terms of not being able to link another Nectar account but to me that’s better than getting 50K Avios pinched!

• Anna says:

  6 Feb6 February 08:25

  Rob, you’re correct that the hackers will probably get away with this, especially if they’re based abroad (I can’t see many criminals being hugely motivated by a basket of free groceries from Sainsbury’s). I don’t know what BA’s policy is but many companies don’t even involve the police when anything like this happens, and even when they do it’s very. very difficult to trace criminals through IPP addresses. If they are based overseas, you can basically forget it unless there’s a very serious offence being investigated.
  You just have to hope BA decides you’re an innocent victim and reimburses the missing avios, but this isn’t guaranteed either because you’d struggle to prove to them that it wasn’t you who transferred the avios out.

  • Anna says:

    6 Feb6 February 08:28

    (Quickly checks avios balance…)

  • Chris Heyes says:

    6 Feb6 February 11:00

    Hi, Anna i agree with the first part the hackers will probably get away with it.
    and yes most company’s don’t inform the police, even cover it up themselves if they can
    But disagree with the part were you say it’s very difficult to “trace” any hacker can be traced overseas or not.
    It’s just very expensive to do in practice, you need to employ a Hacker Chaser which costs a lot, but it can be done depending on resources.
    London police have there own, but are very stretched, but still manage to shut some down, very few arrests though

    • Anna says:

      6 Feb6 February 11:07

      Hi Chris – sorry, I didn’t mean technologically difficult, what hampers investigations is that it’s not easy to get authority to access someone’s data, you have to jump through hoops to get a RIPA authority including proving that you won’t impinge on anyone else’s privacy (accidentally or otherwise) – known as “collateral intrusion”. Facebook is notorious for refusing to supply member’s details and because the company is based in the US it’s virtually impossible to get them to co-operate.
      Apple is a similar case in point – they refuse to give customer details even to the FBI so in this country the government had to pass a separate law making it an offence to refuse to give your password to the police. You often see criminals taking the relatively minor punishment for this rather than giving up the contents of their phones.

      • memesweeper says:

        6 Feb6 February 11:37

        Im not a criminal and I won’t be giving up my password if I get my collar felt. IMO accused people should not be required to self incriminate.

      • Anna says:

        6 Feb6 February 14:33

        You’re not going to be asked to give up your password unless you’re actively being investigated! Though you might feel differently if you (or your family) were the victim of a massive fraud or sex abuse ring.

        • Brian says:

          7 Feb7 February 21:44

          If my family were the victim of massive fraud why would the police need access to my phone?

      • bafan says:

        6 Feb6 February 16:37

        Same. I also wouldn’t. How can I have the right to remain silent if they can force you to give your password. This country SMH.

• Anna says:

  6 Feb6 February 08:31

  If hackers can access one BAEC account, can they then transfer avios from the whole HHA? Just wondering whether to change all our passwords now, even though the child members, for example, don’t have any avios of their own to speak of.

  • Doug M says:

    6 Feb6 February 10:40

    Why not change them, it’s decent prevention and little effort.

  • Dr C says:

    6 Feb6 February 11:33

    No only the Avios directly held

• Sam says:

  6 Feb6 February 08:37

  Was the key issue poor security on the email account? Or reused emails?

  Email is often the gateway into our online lives. It needs to be very secure. As others have said:
  – use a password manager so you can have long(ish) unique passwords
  – use multi factor authentication

  Both Microsoft and Apple are introducing free passwords managers so you really have no excuse. If you don’t trust the cloud, you can get ones stored on a single pc if that is practical for you

  • Sam says:

    6 Feb6 February 08:37

    Reused emails = reused passwords….

  • memesweeper says:

    6 Feb6 February 11:40

    Bitwarden offers free cloud storage of your encrypted password database. They *cannot* read it and you do not need to ‘trust’ the cloud. The code base they use is open and audited. You only need to trust the maths behind the crypto. Strongly recommended for security and convenience.

• meta says:

  6 Feb6 February 08:49

  Can someone remind me whether you actually need BAEC account password to link Nectar and BAEC? It seems that only BAEC number is sufficient in which case changing your BAEC password won’t help.

  • AJA says:

    6 Feb6 February 08:57

    Yes I had to log in to my BAEC account when I first linked the two. That was via the nectar app. And when transferring 1600 nectar point I got a OTP code via text. No idea if you get a OTP when sending Avios to nectar

    • meta says:

      6 Feb6 February 09:01

      Ah, ok. So you do need the password. So the hacker knew the reader’s BAEC password as well. This isn’t clear from the article.

• signol says:

  6 Feb6 February 08:58

  A few years ago I had my Nectar account hacked, £40 of points were stolen and used in store in Leicester. (I live in Norwich and could prove it couldn’t have been me. I was at work the whole day). Nectar closed the account, opened me a new one, and refunded the missing points.

  • Lottie says:

    6 Feb6 February 09:16

    Same happened to me about 5 years ago, luckily I’d spent nectar that day in my local shop and the stolen £80 was used in a shop hundreds of miles away. All my points were refunded by Nectar pretty quickly.

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