Back in late March, British Airways had a bizarre situation whereby they locked thousands of Executive Club members out of their accounts and took all of their Avios. Apparently they locked all accounts which were using third parties to access their Executive Club accounts. In other words, they locked the accounts of anyone who uses…
Continue reading: What Happened To My British Airways Account?!
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Have I been pwned .com? No way that's a safe website or that email is actually from BA.
This does not seem to be much of a mystery to me. Looks like someone is following your blog and is trying to claim retrospective Avios for flights that you have taken, so that they can then spend those Avios quickly on something or transfer them.
Something strange going on here for sure. I would call ba and escalate the issue. My first reaction is someone has been trying to hack your account.
Would be interested to hear what happens.
Good luck.
"For more information on what information has been breached and the source of this breach, there are a number of web sites you can review, including https://haveibeenpwned.com/ ."
HAHA. so professional-sounding. Great site though, I'll admit
I got my account breached a month ago. Try and escalate to audit, but beware, they will lock your account again for a month.
Im having a similar problem not being able to access my executive club account. I did use award wallet to check my balance. Ive been trying for weeks to get someone at BA to help me straighten out the problem and get access to my account again but so far no luck. I
Maybe someone trying to make up for that time they cancelled your Paris flight and rebooked you Raleigh - Los Angeles by getting you extra miles and status with BA?
Someone hacked your account and is trying to get avios. See if you can change your login credentials there and for all award wallets you're using.
Yep, sounds like some unimaginative soul thought it might be a good idea to pretend to be you and claim for flights they think you've taken. Hope it gets sorted out soon.
My guess: to a small but real slice of the world, you are a celebrity, with all the exposure that comes with that to attempts to access and disrupt your life. Someone either has hacked your account, or equally likely is "phishing" for access to it.
At the very minimum, if you haven't done so already you need to change every single password related to travel, email, social media and banking to something unique and unhackable by brute force methods or basic social engineering.
Personally I'd recommend a combination of 1Password and Diceware (see this blog entry at 1Password's site: https://blog.agilebits.com/2011/06/21/toward-better-master-passwords/).
These are good precautions for everyone to take, of course, and maybe you already have genuinely secure passwords and other protections in place. But if not, it's time to get cracking, so to speak. The good news is that password managers like 1Password make it pretty easy to maintain a high level of personal security . . . on your end. You can't do much about the servers run by the companies who store your data, but compared to your celebrity risk, which is exceptionally high (ask Jennifer Lawrence), that broader, general-public risk is relatively low if your passwords are truly unique and unguessable.
My account was locked and Avios removed a few weeks before the devaluation when I was trying to use them for redemptions. I was really annoyed with the lack of communication from BA.
Thought you might find this email interesting:
Thank you for your patience while we have been investigating how your Executive Club account was compromised. Please accept our apologies for the difficulties that you have experienced due to this incident.
Due to several attacks against various companies and websites in recent years, some of our customers have found that their email addresses and some of their passwords have been included on lists made available on the internet. These lists were not compiled using data stolen from British Airways but are the result of attacks against third parties unrelated to British Airways.
The email address you were using on your account is included in a list of personal data that has been shared on several websites. You can see references to your email at https://haveibeenpwned.com , for example. The information available in this list is likely to have been enough to gain access to your account, particularly if you tend to use the same password for multiple websites.
Unfortunately, the unauthorised user would have had full access to your own account and any information about you stored on it. The other Members in your Household account would not have been compromised, unless at any time the email address on their accounts was shared by you. However, the third party would have been able to see their names and membership numbers.
I can certainly understand how concerned you must feel about this incident. Our Audit team are continuing to monitor your account. Please make sure you are using a strong password that is not in use on any other website. You should also secure your identity with any other website where you used the compromised email address as your email address or user name.