Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - be careful! Others can easily obtain your PIN

Hello All,

Do any of you actually pay attention to those paper statements you get in the mail? OR, have you updated your mailing address to make sure you get them? I just realized from the latest statement, that your account PIN now appears on the top right corner of the statements.

Knowing your Membership number appears on your statement, as well as your name and address, people who opens your statement can EASILY abuse your account. For example, they can easily book an award ticket on the internet, or perform unauthorized transactions on your behalf.

I have wrote to MPC to seriously look into this matter, as I believe this puts our accounts at risk. For example, they can access the MPC webpage, and look into your "member details" to obtain your birth dates, or even Passport numbers. Then, they can use this information for other purpose, such as abusing pretending to be yourself to access your credit card details.

So, watch out. Those who say I'm too paranoid, well, you might be the next victim!

Looks like the airline is exposing itself to liability. If they disclose your details and PIN on the statement and someone uses it in an unauthorized manner then you are not responsible for these transactions.

One could send friends and relatives on free award trips... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

PAranoid perhaps? If someone does get a hold of this and books a ticket it would be easy to trace, the only liability would be for the miles to be returned. I would imagine that the traveller would then be in some serious trouble as they would have conspired to use the miles not belonging to them.

If this happened with my bank I would be concerned but not so in this case.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Shout:
PAranoid perhaps?
</font>

Shout, let me clarify my points.

First of all, PIN is a security measure to identify the authority to access any accounts, wheather it be the banks, or your FFP. The point is, if these PINs are disclosed along with the membership account # and your name and your full address, it really fails to serve its intended purposes. I'm not so worried as to someone using my points, because as you pointed out, these unauthorized transactions can be easily adjusted.

Secondly, I'm more worried about the vulnerability of the personal information. FOR EXAMPLE, if someone access my
MPC account and learns my birthdate, and the next day they steal my bank statement, they can call my bank and pretend to be me, because they know enough about me. (Usually banks asks birthdate for verification)

Yes you could say I'm paranoid, but I believe I have reasonable ground to question Cathay's policy on membership privacy protection.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Shout:
I would imagine that the traveller would then be in some serious trouble as they would have conspired to use the miles not belonging to them.</font>

A smart traveller who is out to scam some miles off CX is unlikely to use his usual details when booking the flight. Since most of us have dual if not triple or quadruple citizenships then passport number in the system also becomes irrelevant. Besides, how often do 'uncle Charlie' and 'aunt Mary' travel in the front cabin anyway? http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif If they don't use the airline that often and have various citizenships then it is almost impossible to trace the culprit. the only option for CX is to refund the miles to the original account holder.

Firstly you can only steal what is in the account and the fact that CX would pay it back covers that.

If a ticket was redeemed for you then your details are there and easy to find, if you have gone as far as getting a fake passport then you should really be going for something more precious than miles.

Fakecd ideally this is not printed along with the statement but it is not the same as a bank, the liability here is limited and this would most likely be a weighed business decision with acceptable risk.

A bank on the other hand has lot's more to lose especially with credit cards, they would never put a pin and a statement together.

It is ironic that this comment you have made is aired on a public forum such as this only to bring greater awareness to the would be criminal.

Good point though, it does make it easier for the naughty,.

Actually Hilton Honors has been doing this for years. Everyone seems to always forget their PIN.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Shout:
if you have gone as far as getting a fake passport then you should really be going for something more precious than miles.
</font>

Who said anything about a FAKE passport? People can have genuine passports from numerous countries. For example, you can be born in China, be brought up in Canada, have an Italian spouse, have a Brazilian love-child and qualify for Australian residency. This means that quite legitemately you can have 5 citizenships, not to mention the ones you can get from most tax-havens for a small investment. I can go on, you know...

I had DL miles stolen once. DL did nothing, therefore I do not fly them anymore, and I am a happy 1K