flyzabit

A year or two ago, some gamers rigged up a way to automate the Club Live points and posted that on a blog. So MS fixed that to only work once per family ever.
On PC points, the MCR redemption codes were discovered to have a guessable pattern a year or so ago, so that got locked down for a good while.
Now this and a new person posting on FT indicated he was one of the 6-figure folks who wrote a script to get these survey points after "discovering" no max cap. This "gaming" is hardly innocent and random, particularly if rapidly redeemed.

pr0digy25

Hope IHG finds a way in their T & C's to terminate the persons account... no status and no points.

Back to the start... like Monopoly.

Flamewing

I have to disagree with you.
Unlike other promotions you did not have to enter your PCR PIN - just the membership number and last name. I did some (very few) point earnings for a friend of mine without his knowledge - just to do him a favour - because I know his PCR number and of course his last name. So HE is definitely NOT guilty and should not suffer from anything more than having those points been deducted.
Would it have been necessary to also enter the PIN I couldn't have done anything with his account.
And this is the next problem for PCR: they do not know and cannot find out WHO added the points to all of the affected accounts...

Hannibal Lecter

Go to jail. Go directly to jail. Do not pass go, do not collect $

21H21J

Looks like the quiz is active again. Anyone want to see if they have limited entries...

Although my account is still being "audited"

Points Surfer

You know its the same as last Falls game piece deal where everyone shared codes and you had only one entry per country as IHG IT locked out repeats. That was a "normal" promo and the only real difference between this fiasco was IHG IT left the keys in the door.

Good point Flamewing... if deviants were so ambitious to steal hordes of points with a script in the hours of freedom they had then who is to say they didn't create a multitude of fake accounts w/ fake identities too....then several points.com accts to convert them through, etc,etc. The more you think about it....I seriously doubt this issue originated on FT in the first place as we find out second hand anyway. Which could lead one to think some credit card scam tactics were used early on and our "FT World" could just be the least of IHG's worries.

Points Surfer

Probably IT bait lol

soitgoes

Right...
Ultimately I don't think they are really upset at most folks--that is, those who had about 1,000 points or so post to their accounts.

I think they are concerned at their IT failure and at the serious fraud that apparently was committed with scripts, etc. Naturally they are probably dealing with those serious issues first and don't necessarily have the time to re-activate accounts they deactivated as a security precaution. For example, let's say someone had hundreds of thousands of points and used them to book airline tickets--that's real money flowing out of IHG's coffers.

Points Surfer

soitgoes.....not hard to imagine a million points dumped into an offshore swap account & poof, gone. Despite the huge inconvenience I'm a little more understanding of the cybercrime element.

azepine00

Yes but the locked accounts are costing them $ right now and will continue to do so until they are unlocked and people start making reservations. It's hard to say how many accounts are affected - it was a perfectly legit promo and if everyone who ran this quiz even once is locked out it is probably not a small number.
They should allow CSRs to unlock accounts when the number of points from this promo is below a certain threshold - be it 100, 1000 or 10000 it's up to them to decide.

pmaddock

I have to wonder if some variation of this is going on. CSRs have unlocked some accounts with phone calls - including my own. I know there have been reports of subsequent re-locking but that doesn't seem to have happened with all and my account is still open.

Either way the absence of a message from IHG and even the absence of any stated policy from the CSR's is not good. It would be really re-assuring if they would just say that anyone that took under X points is going to be spared, Y points will be penalized Ax1000 points, and those who took more than Z points will be subject to continued action or alike. If they said something like that I'm sure that most of the concern would be taken care of and we'd feel free to book in the knowledge continued accumulation was possible.

docklander

Very much doubt anyone with a verified couple of thousant point haul is of any concern.Theyre gunning for the big abusers .Really wouldn't worry about it.

tkyoshi

For Sure, I think it's the people who's intent is to rack up the free points then redeem out instantly for gift cards and such. Once those gift cards leave the warehouse the money is pretty much lost forever plus that's IHG's money. They're probably not overly concerned about people with points stays since they can probably revoke those if it is indeed illegitimate and always within IHG's control.

Kind of like how stores get scammed with stolen credit cards which are used to buy gift cards, when the credit cards come back stolen the store can't do anything.

docklander

Assuming the usual tardiness of PCR in sending anything including gift cards etc,and likewise assuming most of the fraudulent major point acqusitions were very recent(rather unclear....and doubful IHG will readily give the numbers anyway) , one does surely doubt the caught perpetrators have got away with very much apart from perhaps 1 or 2 freebie nights(which would have a negligible impact on revenue anyway).

soitgoes

a) Flights are redeemed in real time.
b) They first have to find the problem accounts and then reverse redemptions. That's not trivial if their IT systems are poor, which they are (the root of the problem).