Stolen funds!!

[Canto]

OP, I’m so sorry this happened to you, but I want to thank you for reporting it here. I never realized how easily it is to steal money off the gift cards from the site. I just went in and deleted all my cards. Prayers you get your money back!!!

 

[DebLovesPooh]

No, I didn’t get any emails!! Usually when I add, delete, and transfer I ALWAYS get 3 emails for those specific 3 actions. I got nothing!!

Please change the password on your Disney account. If they can access your gift card account, they can access all of them.

 

[lockets]

Im very afraid of this happening. This isnt the first time someone has reported it. Again to try to safeguard yourself do you consolidate the cards and then immediately delete the card?

Im looking to consolidate the next weeks and i want to make sure i do it correctly. thanks

This is how I've organized mine...

I generally only use electronic cards from Target unless Disney refunds me at an on-site shop with a live card. I pull all the codes from the electronic cards received via email and I note those in my LastPass account. Because I use LastPass to ensure my email password is never re-used on other sites, and because I programmed my email to make me change my password every few months I do still keep the original Target emails in my email account as a backup because I feel my email account is pretty secure. I also only accumulate cards prior to a planned/specific vacation and I try not to buy more gift cards then I can spend. If I need more on the vacation, I buy it in the moment from Target online which delivers quickly. So if someone did hack my email, it's likely those emailed numbers are already zeroed out unless they happened to hack me within 2 months of my vacation window when I was in accumulation mode.

I add any live cards to LastPass so that is the central location for all the information. Live cards are either kept in my wallet or at a secure place at home depending on when I need them. Again it's very rare for me to have a live card.

Then I consolidate cards (if need be) on the Disney Gift Card site. I note the updated balances in the Notes section of LastPass for each card. Then I delete everything from Disney's site when I'm done.

In summary, the Disney site is used to check balances and consolidate. Not to hold/store cards.

 

[jujubiee4]

This is how I've organized mine...

I generally only use electronic cards from Target unless Disney refunds me at an on-site shop with a live card. I pull all the codes from the electronic cards received via email and I note those in my LastPass account. Because I use LastPass to ensure my email password is never re-used on other sites, and because I programmed my email to make me change my password every few months I do still keep the original Target emails in my email account as a backup because I feel my email account is pretty secure. I also only accumulate cards prior to a planned/specific vacation and I try not to buy more gift cards then I can spend. If I need more on the vacation, I buy it in the moment from Target online which delivers quickly. So if someone did hack my email, it's likely those emailed numbers are already zeroed out unless they happened to hack me within 2 months of my vacation window when I was in accumulation mode.

I add any live cards to LastPass so that is the central location for all the information. Live cards are either kept in my wallet or at a secure place at home depending on when I need them. Again it's very rare for me to have a live card.

Then I consolidate cards (if need be) on the Disney Gift Card site. I note the updated balances in the Notes section of LastPass for each card. Then I delete everything from Disney's site when I'm done.

In summary, the Disney site is used to check balances and consolidate. Not to hold/store cards.

What is this? does it help? Extra security?

 

[DVCSunDevil]

I tried to log back in and was able to. The person who hacked me deleted my original card and left a different card titled “work” with a $0 balance. When I first found my card/funds were missing, I was able to see some transaction history and I saw funds spent at Disneyland resort. Now I can’t see any history and it’s giving me an error code. I hope and pray they can resolve this

I know when I consolidate funds to a new card I get an email notifying me the funds were transferred to another card. Did you get any of those emails?

 

[DVCSunDevil]

No, I didn’t get any emails!! Usually when I add, delete, and transfer I ALWAYS get 3 emails for those specific 3 actions. I got nothing!!

Just saw this. Did you go into your settings and check your email address? The worry is that once they hacked your account they went in and changed the email address so they would get the alerts and not you.

 

[;-)]

Just saw this. Did you go into your settings and check your email address? The worry is that once they hacked your account they went in and changed the email address so they would get the alerts and not you.

I just checked, my email is set correctly in my account. Thank you for bringing that up

 

[focusondisney]

In summary, the Disney site is used to check balances and consolidate. Not to hold/store cards.

Exactly. The website states it is not a digital wallet & shouldn’t be treated as one. Which means don’t store anything there.

 

[;-)]

Exactly. The website states it is not a digital wallet & shouldn’t be treated as one. Which means don’t store anything there.

I don’t think anyone uses it to “store” gift cards. It says to always keep the physical card and to treat it like cash. This website is supposed to be a tool to track, consolidate and keep your cards on file. It even has a drop down tab titled “my cards”. If there was risk of security breech they shouldn’t allow you to keep your cards on file…PERIOD!

 

[jujubiee4]

Just curious are you local to Disneyland? Could it be anyone you know?

 

[;-)]

Just curious are you local to Disneyland? Could it be anyone you know?

Nope! I live in New York, never been to Disneyland in my life!

 

[lockets]

What is this? does it help? Extra security?

It's a password generator and keeper. It also organizes all your web logins, credit cards, membership cards, personal information, etc in one place. It's encrypted not easy for someone to hack LastPass.

It integrates well with iPhone. It will auto-fill passwords on the iPhone when selected in settings. There's also a a web version for when I'm on my laptop and need to access passwords. It will autofill passwords for you if you download the browser extenstion, however I simply copy and paste all my passwords from lastpass into web sites manually.

if you google lastpass they probably have videos that will show you how it all works. I'm sure it probably works with android too although I have no experience with android phones.

There's a free version of LastPass that I used for many years and that was great. I recently upgraded to a paid version.

Password keepers like this are recommended tools to ensure you don't lose/misplace passwords and that you don't have them written down in a place that someone could access or steal. It also generates passwords for you to make sure it's a strong password which is a feature I really like. It will also flag logins that are using the same passwords (as that's a no no).

 

[gottalovepluto]

I’m really unsure how this person stole my funds and you could be right—it could have been through email, i often upload and consolidate new cards. Who knows really. My card was no longer there but they left an unrelated card linked with $0 funds..nicknamed “work”. I always delete cards I consolidate with zero balance. That’s why I’m thinking someone hacked into my Disneygiftcard.com account.

Your Disney account was hacked then. They could not have left a card on your account without logging in which requires your email and password. That email and password combo is toast.

On to your email. If you received no emails your email might have been hacked as well. I ran a test on my Disney gift card account just now and deleted a card and was sent a confirmation email in less than a minute. After seeing that I tried to change my email address- “stop!” Disney said, we’ve sent a temp password to your current email to confirm this action. This tells me odds are your email on the Disney gc site could not have been changed without you getting emails regarding it. You seeing no email evidence means they deleted it.

Some of these gift card hackers go undetected for a long time, that’s their aim. This is a known scam. They hack the email and then drain gift cards linked in anyway to the account, deleting the confirming emails as they go along and the mark is none the wiser until they try to use a gift card. The person who used your gc in Disneyland might not have even been the thief. I’d bet they weren’t actually. They might have just been an average person looking for any savings and bought off a discount gc website in the moment and gone about their merry day.

My conclusion: you need to treat this like an email hack, not a simple Disney gift card account hack.

I would:
1. Get the email pw changed
2. enable two factor authentication on your email account
3. Set up with a password manager like mentioned above
4. Check on all accounts anywhere that might have gift card balances stored on them (Amazon, Target come to my mind)
5. Confirm the current balances on any gift cards that were emailed to you that should still have a balance. (Some companies will just send you gc info and others send you a link where all you have to do is verify your email address to access the gc.)
6. Change all passwords associated with your email address

 

[cvjw]

OP, so sorry this happened to you. This is one of my fears and one reason I don’t really use gift cards anymore. Just too easy for people to steal the funds off the cards these days.

There is another way people could have stolen the funds. People get gift card numbers before they are activated, check to see if they have been activated and use all the funds before the actual owner once activated. This happened close to me. A charity purchased many target gift cards to hand out for Christmas for needy kids. Bought the gift cards at our Kroger. Took the kids to target to spend the gift cards and the money had already been stolen from all the cards when the kids went to check out.

People just seem to have no limits to how they steal these days.

 

[gottalovepluto]

There is another way people could have stolen the funds. People get gift card numbers before they are activated, check to see if they have been activated and use all the funds before the actual owner once activated. This happened close to me. A charity purchased many target gift cards to hand out for Christmas for needy kids. Bought the gift cards at our Kroger. Took the kids to target to spend the gift cards and the money had already been stolen from all the cards when the kids went to check out.

People just seem to have no limits to how they steal these days.

But in this case OP had a new zero balance Disney card added to their account that they didn’t put there.

Yeah, Target had a horrendous gc breach a few Christmases back. I think it’s the worst we’ve seen actually. Stories were coming in all over the place that year, drained right after activating. They found their leak or whatever and re-did their gc security and we haven’t seen anything like that since from them.

 

[cruisehopeful]

Another possibility is that it was an inside job. Just like every other company, people get hired and quit/get fired shortly thereafter. Who's to say a bad apple didn't get in there?

 

[DLgal]

If you get nowhere on this, if your deductible is low enough on your homeowners/renters insurance, you may be able to file a claim that way.

No homeowners/renters insurance policy would cover this loss. It's considered cash. You can't file a claim for stolen cash. Plus, this was done online. No one actually stole the giftcard from the person's house.

 

[jujubiee4]

What I'm wondering is when you make a payment to Disney....cruise...hotel...after party
tickets ....DVC..etc if you pay over the phone I'm pretty positive I was asked for the pincode.

Well if that card is zero'ed out now from the payment should you transfer from another
card to "reload"? Isn't there danger in that since you gave the pin code previously? Even
consolidating don't you have to put in pincode? So is it stored even after deletion?

 

[lockets]

People get gift card numbers before they are activated, check to see if they have been activated and use all the funds before the actual owner once activated. This happened close to me. A charity purchased many target gift cards to hand out for Christmas for needy kids. Bought the gift cards at our Kroger. Took the kids to target to spend the gift cards and the money had already been stolen from all the cards when the kids went to check out.

I had read about target (and other gift cards) being zeroed out by another party after activation at cash register. I always wondered how they did that. Now I know!

And the example you gave about the charity is heartbreaking. Just. Wow.

 

[lockets]

What I'm wondering is when you make a payment to Disney....cruise...hotel...after party
tickets ....DVC..etc if you pay over the phone I'm pretty positive I was asked for the pincode.

Well if that card is zero'ed out now from the payment should you transfer from another
card to "reload"? Isn't there danger in that since you gave the pin code previously? Even
consolidating don't you have to put in pincode? So is it stored even after deletion?

This is similar to what I wrote on page 1 about cards being used to pay at on site restaurants. Waiters will take my entire phone with the screenshot that includes the PIN number to the back to pay or they’ll take an actual gift card back there. Technically once you’ve called in or given the gift card number and pin code to a CM of any sort - that card is no longer secure. I’ve never experienced any funny business with the CMs, but a PP did make a good point that there’s bad apples here and there.

For that reason I don’t re-use the same card over and over to load new $ on it. Once it’s spent I retire it. It’s still not Fort Knox but it’s at least something.