If you’ve been in the world of miles and points long enough, then I’m sure many of you must be sitting on very high balances in your accounts. However, while that it all great, there’s one aspect that people often don’t pay attention to. Account security for loyalty programs is often overlooked and it becomes even more critical once you’ve accumulated a high balance. A compromised account can be drained in minutes, wiping out years of careful earning with little recourse. One such Hilton Honors member faced exactly that, seeing over 1 million points wiped out from their account in a matter of minutes.
1 Million Points Gone
“Was checking email a couple of days ago and received a confirmation that someone was attempting to access my Hilton account. I jumped online to see if I could quickly change the password and also got on the phone with Hilton. As I was doing that, there was another email saying that the account had been linked to Amazon. The rep worked quickly, but, by the time she could secure the account, over a million points were gone. All happening in real time.
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The Pundit’s Mantra
If you’re wondering about Amazon.com redemptions using Hilton Honors points, I’d not encourage you, unless you really need to. you generally get a very low ratio of around 0.2 cents per point.
This incident further underscores the importance of account security, especially if you’re carrying high balances. Compared to credit card companies, airline and hotel loyalty programs often don’t have the same levels of security to protect you account. It always helps to stay ahead.
It always helps to enable tow factor authentication whenever possible. Moreover, I always make it a practice ti keep updating passwords whenever necessarily, usually at least once a year. You can also use one of many password management apps that are available in the market.
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Marriott Bonvoy
@ givemeabreak — Amazon doesn’t care. This is the same slimy company that locked people’s gift card accounts with no explanation or recourse. Furthermore, the ability to liquidate these poinyts should not even be allowed, or certainly should require multiple hoops to be jumped through. Making this form of theft so easy is ultimately the vendors fault.
Stories like this don’t make sense to me…first, my baseline is not to believe anything some random person who I know nothing about posts. I will never figure out why people just believe everything they see on the internet, especially reddit. Who is to say this isn’t a made up story by someone trying to get a few bucks from a gofundme for saps who feel bad for them. A million Hilton points gone? Where? you can’t just convert them to bitcoin. So they transferred to Amazon and got like $1400 at the current transfer rate and maybe got gift cards…Amazon can cancel the gift cards if it’s fraud and refund the points. Even if they ordered stuff, it has to ship which doesn’t happen instantly. There’s time to stop/hold any shipment. Why wouldn’t someone who is such a seasoned traveler and points person (to have over a million Hilton points) have basic two factor on their account?
@givemeabreak: If you’ve been watching, this is not a one off. These Amazon routed Hilton account hacks have happened in the past as well. https://thepointsguy.com/news/hilton-honors-members-amazon-accounts-drained-of-points/