SHARE

Do you have a Starbucks gift card with you, then before doing any transaction make sure they are safe on your account.

The latest about Starbucks card is they are vulnerable towards hack through mobile transaction. The credit card number and card balance can be easily accessed by hackers. The situation is worse because of auto load feature of the cards. This feature,   with time can get more cash deposited in card when it reaches certain minimum balance.

Last year over $2 billion were transacted through mobile app through gift card only. With such big transaction amount the problem of vulnerability worsens. Out of six transactions, one is through mobile app due to which user can lose millions.

To safeguard your account from hacker’s view, customer’s need to disable the auto load feature. At initial stage it was just a simple scam of hacking gift card balance but with auto load feature, it got powerful as hackers get information about customer’s account.

Once they have your account information, they will fetch all the money from your account without intimating you, more to this the moment your card balance reaches minimum as balance got drained by hacker it automatically reloads the amount .This allows them to steal more money that too quickly.

starhack

Starbucks Customer from Orlando named as Maria Nistri of 48 yrs., was one of those whose card got hacked in this scam. She had $34.77 in her account and card. Hackers got through her card and drained all her money, the moment card reached zero it automatically got reloaded by $ 25. Hackers even changed the reload amount to be 75$ instantly. She got to know about the incident when she received an email stating her card got recharged and she responded to Starbucks about the theft. In all the scam she lost an amount of 167$.

The bigger theft lies in the use of same username and password for different accounts making them vulnerable towards theft. Once hackers have received your username and password they might try it onto different account and steal more than you can think of.

As stated by Bob Sullivan who is consumer advocate and tech skeptic. He even mentioned that Starbucks need to explain how hackers get through gift cards and consumers won’t be responsible for the amount they lost in the scam. Auto load feature should be disconnected immediately from their cards and applications.

NO COMMENTS

LEAVE A REPLY

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.