Security → United & American Frequent flyer miles stolen

DALLAS — Thieves with stolen usernames and passwords have broken into customer accounts at American and United airlines and in some cases booked free trips or upgrades.

The airlines say the incidents happened in late December. American began notifying affected customers by email on Monday, a spokeswoman said.
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Both were quick to say that nobody hacked their systems — that thieves got usernames and passwords somewhere else and tried to use them to log into American’s AAdvantage and United’s MileagePlus, hoping that the login information would be the same. They said that other information such as entire credit-card numbers was not exposed.

»www.dallasnews.com/busin ··· iles.ece

They can have my miles. Oh wait I lost the few I had since I haven't flown in almost 5 years. I don't want to go near the TSA (Touch-Search-Abuse) if I can help it.
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Don't feed trolls--it only makes them grow!

Good job people, keep using the same email/password combo for everything...

What am I missing here? Wouldn't it be rather evident who had illegally obtained these trips or upgrades when someone showed up to claim them?

The resources needed to bring the culprits to justice would be better consumed on other more critical crimes.

But what resources are needed? Since using air miles to buy a ticket is a transaction associated with a particular account, surely it is clear exactly which tickets were illegally obtained. And tickets have unique numbers. And eventually someone has to show up to get any value from the ticket. And these days you need id matching the name on the ticket, no?

Frame that around what crime has been committed.
"United Airlines spokesman Luke Punzenberger said thieves booked trips or made mileage transactions on up to three dozen accounts."
"...the airline has learned of two cases in which somebody booked a free trip or upgrade without the account holder’s knowledge. "

Those are the very reason I placed these flights as occurring offshore.
Between U.S. Dept of State working out the extradition details, Federal Prosecutors involvement, foreign governments cooperation etc... the thieves have & will continue to fly with fraudulent tickets with all but guaranteed impunity offshore.
The largest risk these fliers face is the tickets not being honored at the gate.

Flights that occurred within our borders would require FBI resources including personnel, time & money to identify the accounts to build a prosecution case that a Federal Prosecutor is willing to accept.
That would involve more than ID'ing an account.
It would require proof beyand a reasonable doubt that the account holder was the actual flier.
That being done they'd have to be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt the flier was aware of the fraud.

Not un-doable but the bang for the buck isn't there, IMO.

But it could be terrorists, so we should drop everything and throw lots of resources and anti-terrorism legislation after the culprits.

Crying 'stop the terrorists' worked for the media industry, why not throw that argument out there for the airlines?
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"Apparently you can’t hack into a government supercomputer and try and buy uranium without the Department of Homeland Security tattling to your mother."
-- Sheldon Cooper

Actually that would be the only way I can see this getting any LE traction.

You'd think though that since terrorist already risk flying under an alias they wouldn't bring the additional attention of using stolen frequent miles awards to their destination.

hehe, I seriously doubt the airlines would appreciate additional assistance from the TSA.
I'll guess if disclosure were not legally required this thread would have never happened.