The customer data of more than 380,000 people have been compromised. British Airways (BA), the largest airline in the United Kingdom, operating flights to almost every major city in the US, has been attacked by hackers.
Cybercriminals have stolen the personal and financial details of hundreds of thousands of BA customers. The data includes credit card details and other banking information, as well as names, addresses, and phone numbers of people who have used the website and the app between 22:58 BST August 21st, 2018 and 21:45 BST September 5th, 2018. According to British Airways, the stolen data does not include passport details. Currently is not known if the hackers have been able also to access saved cards on the website.
The data breach was announced earlier this week on the company’s blog. According to the statement released by BA, the breach is now resolved, and both the website and the app are safe to use. The airline carrier has hired a team of experts who currently are investigating the cause of the breach. BA has notified the police and all relevant authorities about the incident. It is still unknown who is behind the attack and if the stolen data has already been used for fraudulent transactions.
Alex Cruz, British Airways’ Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer said “We are deeply sorry for the disruption that this criminal activity has caused. We take the protection of our customers’ data very seriously.”
The UK airline has already started approaching the potential victims assuring them to keep an eye on their bank accounts and report any unusual account activities to the bank. If you’ve purchased anything from British Airways over the last few weeks, your identity and finances might be in potential trouble.
British Airways angered its customers by tweeting about the leak instead of approaching the victims directly. Even though BA is a company that bills itself as the world’s favorite airline, this is an excellent example that even companies that strive to take data protection very seriously sometimes fall victims to hackers and experience technical issues.
It is your responsibility to change passwords at least once every three months, monitor your bank statements, and have antivirus software installed on all your connected devices – hackers know that people will be expecting emails from BA and will start sending phishing emails.
Keep your eyes wide open and don’t fall victim!
