benblaney

I was trying to check-in for a united flight about six weeks ago, and when I tried, and there's the screen for passport information it was already populated...with some other guy's information. I could see his full name, last three digits of passport number, passport expiration, etc. I went to the airport (COS) and the same thing happened at the kiosk. I flagged it to a member of staff who said not to worry about it. I made a mental note to report it to united, but forgot.

Then it happened again earlier this month. I was pretty hot about it, and fired off an email to the 1k mailbox, and copied Jeff Smisek. I asked for four things: to know whether my personal information had been compromised like the other guy; that the other guy be notified; that the situation be rectified asap; and an apology.

Within an hour, I had a call from a guy in IT who said that the security group had never seen anything like that before and they would try to figure out how it happened. The next day I had a call from someone else, who didn't know about the call I'd already had. She said that it was a brand new issue, and it was because of a continental itinerary associated with my MP account. Couple of days later I got a call from yet another person, who didn't know about the other calls. She said that it was a known issue, and it was because of a continental itinerary blah blah blah.

At this point, I don't have a lot of faith in anything they're doing or telling me. For a start, I've had a number of permutations. Also, the last time I flew continental was in January, to ARN via AMS (or maybe FRA). So if it's a new issue, the cause can't be the continental flight, clearly.

The one thing that did work was that they deleted the other guy's information from my profile.

Finally, I got an email from united offering me a $200 goodwill certificate, valid only for domestic travel within the U.S. (and so, given my personal circumstances and travel preferences, completely useless for me). I responded, copied Smisek again and said that it was a lousy offer of goodwill for a potentially massive security breach involving my personal sensitive data. No response.

Thought I'd share it here, for your interest. And you might want to check who's passport information is saved in your MP profile...