Londoner woke up on the weekend to discover his Uber profile had been hacked and his bank account emptied.
Neil Thomas, 35, from Ladbroke Grove, was billed just over £2700 for four journeys he never made.
He's adamant no one else had access to his phone, which was by his bedside all night, and is protected by a six digit pass code and touch ID fingerprint recognition.
Musician Neil noticed payments for £5, £756.03, £1395.89 and £551.97 had left his account overnight when he checked his bank statement on Saturday morning.
Neil's Nationwide bank statement showing the three payments leaving his account on Friday 16th and Saturday 17th.
“I contacted Nationwide and was told Uber had made a number of withdrawals from my account,” Neil told us.
“I’m a struggling musician with very little money at the best of times and it crippled me.”
When he contacted Uber to find out how his account had been hacked, Neil was given a cyber security lecture.
They advised him not to use the same passwords and email addresses across different platforms.
Worryingly, they also told him: “instances like this aren’t always preventable.”
As an apology, they offered Neil £12.95 off his next Uber – over two pounds less than new customers get just for signing up!
“They gave me the usual line of ‘we take your security very seriously’,” Neil told us.
“But I want to know how somebody can go into your account and take your money.
“I’m disappointed Uber doesn’t have any safeguards against this – it’s obvious that a fare of £1,395 is suspicious.
“Offering me £12.95 was just insulting.”
It’s not the first time doubts have been cast over the Uber app’s security.
Whilst Uber have refunded Neil, he has no way of withdrawing money because the hack prompted Nationwide to cancel his debit card.
“I’ve had to cancel events as I can’t get there or pay entry so it’s been a major inconvenience,” Neil explained.
We contacted Uber to ask them to explain how Neil’s account was hacked and how other users can stay safe.
Here’s what they told us:
“Someone would have got access to his password and logged into his account.”
When we asked them how users can stay safe, they repeated the line they have Neil:
“Our advice to Uber customers would be - don’t use the same username and password on all your online accounts.”
“There has been no contrition and no effort towards meaningful compensation for crippling me financially for a week.”
5 comments:
Simply, and it couldn't get any simpler, revoke Uber's license or sack the person who continues to license them. If this was the private sector NONE of them would still be employed! It is an utter shambles. It should be a monumental embarrassmeant to the mayor and it should outrage the GLA for highlighting their inautonomy, rendering their positions as null and void, and ultimately it should discredit the government. Maybe we should be targeting the PM anyway.
Starbuck's and Fiat have just been shafted by EU over their Tax payment ( or lack of one ).If Ubend operated as the regulations state they would have a lot of expense for an outfit that can only be described as third rate.You would have thought they have reinvented the wheel with all the spin and paid media people banging on about how great they are.But when push comes to shove how many of these people would put their kids in one of their cars? You can put a suit on a pig but it will still grunt!
In this day and age only the worst kind of parent would put a lone child in ANY vehicle with ANY stranger. At any time, for ANY reason!
Neil chose to use a third world standard of transportation, as do many others. Niel probably waved his iPhone at the Prius driver that night as 5 empty cabs passed him with their 'for hire' lights on.
He made the choice to use Uber and now his bank account has been mullered. No sympathy here!
He's far luckier than the British woman in Sydney that took an Uber from the Kings Cross area to the suburbs, and it wasn't her bank account that got rodgered. The Pakistani national that raped her claims she had consensual sex with him.
It never ceases to amaze me how drunk people get when out partying and the amount of money they spend making themselves vulnerable.
#always use a licensed taxi and never forget, PH and UBER ARE NOT TAXIS.
If you shake hands with the devil you have to pay the price
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