Tens of thousands of British Airways frequent flyer accounts have been compromised in a cyberattack, forcing the company to freeze the accounts and issue an apology, the media have reported.
British Airways sporadically responded to tweets from concerned customers, The Register reports. In one such exchange it said:
"We’re sorry for any concern. We’ve become aware of some unauthorized activity in relation to your account and have frozen your Avios as a precaution. We’ll be sending you more details via an email".
The company said only a small portion of its millions of customers were affected, and that personal information, such as names, credit card information addresses was not stolen in the attack.
However they won’t be able to use their accumulated flight time for some time now.
The company, which has millions of customers, expects to resolve the problem in a few days.
"British Airways has become aware of some unauthorized activity in relation to a small number of frequent flyer Executive Club accounts", a company spokesman said in a statement sent to IB Times UK.
"We would like to reassure customers that, at this stage we are not aware of any access to any subsequent information pages within accounts, including travel histories or payment card details".
"We are sorry for the concern and inconvenience this matter has caused, and would like to reassure customers that we are taking this incident seriously and have taken a number of steps to lock down accounts so they can no longer be accessed", the spokesman added.
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