Was reading about how this happens with Costco all the time. How whenever people buy digital giftcards they are stolen & redeemed very quickly – and Costco can’t / won’t do anything about it.
I’d understand if it was a physical card, but how are digital cards stolen? From my understanding, Costco doesn’t even create the gc # until after the gc is purchased. How can thieves just predict what a giftcard number will be and also when it’ll be redeemed?
In: Technology
If they have access to your email, they can steal the information before you have a chance to use it.
That is the most likely way to steal a digital gift card.
I’ve also heard of people getting all the info from a card while it’s still just on the shelf, before it’s activated.
Someone activates the card as a gift but doesn’t notice it’s been tampered with.
These scammers will check the card daily and immediately use the funds when they see it’s been activated.
A lot of people reuse the same password for their email as they do for many other sites. If I log in to some sketchy site with `[email protected]` and password `password123`, but I log into my `example.com` email with password `password123`, then when that sketchy site gets compromised, so does my email.
Once somebody is in my email, it’s very easy for them to create some kind of script to either forward emails with a certain pattern or just regularly check them, assuming the credentials never change (and the email provider doesn’t add any extra safety measures).
They use bots that are constantly trying random card numbers, eventually they will get one that exists but hasn’t been redeemed yet.
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