The universe is lazy, everything that occurs follows the principle of least action. It should be no surprise that living things have evolved to obtain the most benefit for the least work; consider the intersection of intelligence and energy. And the same is true for humans, we are inherently lazy - choosing the path of least resistance. No matter the work, we will choose the shortest, most easy and least time-consuming way to do it. No matter the path, we will take the most direct and simplest route.
The same could be said for the cyber world wizards, the hackers who would take the easiest path to hack and earn and hence have chosen a new way to earn and steal - "Loyalty Points".
Loyalty Points
Digital Banking systems nowadays is as safe and impenetrable as their physical counterparts and require planning, knowledge and a load of luck to hack. And when there are easily accessible, far less secure targets like Loyalty Points, then why do so much work?
Loyalty Points and schemes are rewards given to customers that they can swap for goods and offers much like currency. Since these are less secure, easy to steal our lazy hackers are now attacking these points instead of the highly secure bank accounts and vaults.
Need to be taken seriously
Andy Still, CTO Netacea writes for Infosecurity Group Website, "People don’t treat loyalty points in the same way as they treat other financial products. When our wallet or purse is stolen or lost, we immediately cancel our credit and debit cards. Our loyalty cards can wait. Retailers tend to treat loyalty points in the same way—logging into an account doesn’t have the same level of security, and two-factor authentication is rare."
People are often careless with their reward accounts, they leave it for months before they check it and the theft goes unnoticed. There's also a benefit that the stolen points will be refunded. In this scam, both the businesses and the customers are affected. The customer doesn't get the benefit of loyalty points nor does the business get what they want- repeat business, customer loyalty and branding. Business needs to take their loyalty points scheme like bank accounts and ask their customers to do the same.
