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Hackers Using Starbucks Gift Cards To Access Credit Cards
jfruh writes: Starbucks inspires loyalty among its heavy users — so much so that they're willing to connect their Starbucks gift cards and phone apps directly to their credit or debit cards, auto-refilling the balance when it runs low. But this has opened up a hole hackers can exploit. Writing about the scheme journalist Bob Sullivan says: "The fraud is a big deal because Starbucks mobile payments are a big deal. Last year, Starbucks said it processed $2 billion in mobile payment transactions, and about 1 in 6 transactions at Starbucks are conducted with the Starbucks app. Maria Nistri, 48, was a victim this week. Criminals stole the Orlando women’s $34.77 in value she had loaded onto her Starbucks app, then another $25 after it was auto-loaded into her card because her balance hit 0. Then, the criminals upped the ante, changing her auto reload amount to $75, and stealing that amount, too. All within 7 minutes."
I don't use it on my phone, didn't use it on my Disney pass, and would not use it for coffee either. None of these organisations have either the security awareness of credit card companies nor the statutory framework requiring them to cover losses where you are not at fault. I like to limit my exposure to the amount I add on
Don't trust a third party with your credit card info.
r in ur c0ff33 nao
using the fold app, use bitcoin and get a 20% discount on Starbucks purchases....And because it is Bitcoin there is no CC to steal.
Everybody wants to go to Starbucks to see and be seen. It's like Facebook in brick-and-mortar form. Seriously the Fakebook should just buy out Starbucks and brand that fucker with Facebook signs everywhere.
tipping over vending machines!
If police are looking for a criminal who drank $125ish of coffee in 7 minutes I'm guessing they just need to look for the crazy wired guy bouncing off the walls...
Lol. Is that what a coffee drinker is now? Like a heroin addict can be a "heavy-user" of heroin.
Does one really "use" coffee more so than drink it. I never really thought that I "used" chicken if I ate it. ?? (Chicken "user"??)
American vs. British English?
Like usual: anytime your credit card is involved: use a good password!
That's all there is to this.
The rest is just fear mothering and click bait.
I have Ipass with auto-reload, wondering if they are safe. I used to have only gift cards in amazon. Then got a little lazy and added a credit card. Then my friend told me about how it was very difficult to deal with Amazon when his account got hacked somehow. He caught a 4000$ order before shipment and tried to get it cancelled. He said he found Amazon very difficult to deal with. He traced the ship-to address to some warehouse on the west coast which acts as proxy customers to people outside USA needing a shipping address in USA. Still it was tough to make Amazon cancel the order. After that I removed credit card from Amazon. If and when I place an order I enter the card data and then remove it immediately.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Why can starbucks gift cards be used for anything other than buying starbucks products? Why is the cash accessible in the first place? Anyone stealing starbucks gift cards, hackers or thieves, ought to be stuck with boat-loads of coffee, after having visited a starbucks store. Otherwise, folks, it ain't a gift card, it's a charge card, credit card, or direct-monetary-device -- and since starbucks ain't a bank, you ought not be entrusting them with direct access to your money.
What's the point of a starbucks "gift card" if it operates no differently from the attached credit card?
Since money is coming from a linked credit card and not cash in her pocket, that stolen money is not Maria's, it's credit card issuer's. Sure, Maria has to deal with a small hassle of reporting a fraudulent transaction but be very sure, this is a much bigger problem for Starbucks and Chase/Citibank/etc that her.
I don't really care about PINs and chips and whatever. If my AmEx is stolen, they will FedEx overnight me a replacement - or I can drop by their office and they'll print me a new one on the spot.
I don't understand what the point is of using a gift card that is automatically reloaded from a credit card once it hits zero. Why not cut out the middleman and use the credit card directly?
This is why I don't let companies do ever have direct access to my accounts.
Not my banking accounts, not my credit card, not anything. Never. Period. No way. If a company demands this, I walk away from the deal 100% of the time.
Giving companies the ability to go in and raid your money is a recipe for disaster. Tying that ability to a phone or a gift card is even worse.
You have pre-authorized the bearer of that device to go in and take your money without any oversight or authentication.
I've known far too many people who have been screwed over by companies who insist on auto-billing but have subsequently demonstrated themselves to be greedy and incompetent corporations who take more money than they're supposed to. And then fixing the problem becomes a nightmare.
So, I'll go all boohoo for people who crave their Starbucks so badly they've created a loophole where their money gets taken without them knowing it. But they did it to themselves.
And I'll continue to say this is precisely why I would never use one of them, or any of the things like Apple Pay and Google Wallet -- because the chance of it being abused, stolen, subject to corporate incompetence or spying is so utterly massive as to outweigh any perceived benefits.
Unfortunately, those of us who warn about these things get shouted down as paranoid worriers. And then people get bit in the ass and we stand here saying "well, we told you so" and laugh at you.
We live in an age where convenience and some shiny bauble will make us do things which, if you really think about it, are pretty reckless. When that has unfortunate, but predictable, consequences ... well, bummer dude.
It's a shame this happens to people. But it's not in any way surprising.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Criminals stole the Orlando women’s $34.77 in value she had loaded onto her Starbucks app, then another $25 after it was auto-loaded into her card because her balance hit 0. Then, the criminals upped the ante, changing her auto reload amount to $75, and stealing that amount, too. All within 7 minutes."
Haw haw!
There are many reports of starbucks taking back gift cards.. I had bought a few gift cards online, and combined them into one in the app. Then, starbucks canceled the whole value. They said one of the cards payment method couldn't be verified. .. So, they wiped out my entire balance ($200) .. Never using starbucks cards or the app again. Please just switch to apple pay.
-- these are only opinions and they might not be mine.
I'm not sure how much "auto-reload" has caught on yet, but normally Amazon requires you reenter your credit card when you send a package to a new address, and if you have auto-reload on, it might not ask if you use your gift card balance. Amazon, does however have a good anti-fraud team which will delay or cancel suspicious orders.
What's so convenient about adding another step between me and paying someone. Why use a gift card or app as an intermediary? In pack, hand the damn person a $10 bill. What's so damn hard about that? At least if someone tries to steal that from me I can tase or shoot them (in my state).
Yup, this is real.
Yesterday morning, I had a notification on my phone that my account was now at $0.00. HUH??!
Launched the app and then noticed my Starbuck's card was removed. WTF?!
I called their support line. They didn't offer much in the way of help, but did say that the email address had been changed on my card and that it was indeed removed. They reset my password and are sending me a new Gold Card.
I woke up to five "We auto-reloaded your card" e-mails from Starbucks overnight. They hit me for $500. They used my Starbucks card (linked to my debit card, set to auto-renew by adding $100 when the balance was low) to purchase email gift card codes in multiples of $25. Canceled my Starbucks card, canceled my debit card, filed a police report. The investigator determined that the codes were sent to a generic e-mail account in Canada, and that was the end of it. The bank was good and put the money back right away. They also changed my debit card number. Starbucks sent me a new card but they never quite fixed the "reload online" part (not auto-reload, which I disabled), so I can only reload in a store, which I'm OK with. Had I known it was going to be that easy for them to hack me, I would have never used auto-reload or had it save my credit card.
If you're going to quote Bob Sullivan's article in the summary, the least you could do is link to his article instead of a re-hash on IT World.
Oh, wait. Submitter jfruh sure has modded up a lot of firehose submissions by user itwbennett, and vice versa. No sense questioning what the "itw" stands for, as ~itwbennett's profile links straight to IT World. Thankfully it doesn't appear to be "our" Bennett, but come on. If you work for IT World, and you have a Slashdot account set up to promote IT world, submit the IT World article from your IT World account. Plenty of astroturfing makes the front page these days, there's no need for subterfuge.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
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When I worked as a cashier in the self scan lane, our store was hit by criminals with stolen credit cards, trying to buy expensive gift cards, to instantly launder the stolen credit cards. They would attempt to buy multiple expensive gift cards in one transaction. I told my manager this, but he didn't really care, just "Make them go thru a regular lane". Gift card fraud is getting out of hand. "There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.” Frank Zappa