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My Woolies Rewards card was hacked today and the points worth $100 were used at a servo in NSW in a single transaction (from my activity statement, I can't say if it was only fuel or some other purchases too, though it's irrelevant). Usually I don't accumulate $$ in my Rewards card but I had received these recently as a promo bonus from a Woolies Insurance deal and I was yet to use them.
This is the first time I have experienced anything like this - upon Google and OzBargain forums search, I found a few posts about such events/ experiences from the past. I would like to know if this has happened to any OzBargainer recently.
It's still beyond my understanding as to how can one know the $$ balance in a Reward card so randomly. I understand that stealing barcodes or numbers from various sources isn't impossible but stealing the cards based on the exact balance on them isn't possible without access to a systematic database (which only employees would have access to or probably not even them). Leaked username and password of the Rewards account could be a possibility but I suspect it's something beyond it because so many people losing their Rewards account's login details every year doesn't sound very realistic. I will appreciate if someone can share info if they have faced such an event in the recent past.
Be careful with your Rewards cards, folks! It doesn't seem to be a rare crime.
Update: EDR customer care weren't even surprised to know about this when I reported this. They tackled it as if it's normal. I doubt if they are putting any effort to stop this either unless they are working on some better technology behind the scene.
An interesting recent article
I have never heard of gridware until 30 seconds ago. But anyway….