Groupon 'hack': what you need to do next
Groupon users urged to check for mystery transactions after criminals accessed certain accounts.
Groupon users are reporting that £100s has been stolen from their accounts by hackers.
People are receiving purchase confirmation emails for items they have not bought with the money being taken from their bank accounts.
In one case a user has lost over £1,000.
Check your free credit report for suspicious activity
What Groupon says
The website claims it has not been directly hacked, but is seeing an number of cases where criminals are accessing Groupon accounts by using log-in details stolen from other websites.
“What we are seeing is a small number of customers who have had their account taken over by fraudsters,” a spokeperson told MoneySavingExpert.com.
They refused to confirm how many people had been affected, but users are complaining that they cannot get through to the customer services department and when they do get a response they’re told it could be up to 10 days before their case is dealt with.
One user told MoneySavingExpert how he had received 20 purchase confirmation emails for items worth between £10 and £900, including an iPad mini worth £150.
What you need to do next
If you think your account has been hacked you should contact Groupon’s customer support centre.
You will be refunded if money has been spent without your permission by criminals.
You should also report the situation to your bank immediately.
Change your passwords
The problems at Groupon are another example of hackers using log-in details they’ve stolen from another website to access accounts.
Protect yourself from this by having different passwords for every online account you have.
Those passwords need to be complex including lower case, upper case and numbers.
Also, keep a close eye on your emails so you can spot a confirmation email for something you haven’t purchases and act upon it.
Check your free credit report for suspicious activity
Stay safe online:
Comments
Be the first to comment
Do you want to comment on this article? You need to be signed in for this feature