Boots has suspended payments using its Advantage Card after a cyberattack that attempted to break into customers' accounts using stolen passwords.
The health and beauty retailer Boots halted all payments using Advantage Card loyalty points in shops and online stores after a cyberattack attempting to log into customers' accounts using stolen passwords.
According to Boots, customers will not be able to use Boots Advantage Card points for transactions while it is dealing with the issue. The company claimed that while none of its own systems were compromised, attackers tried to access accounts using reused passwords from other sites.
A Boots spokeswoman said the attack only affected less than 1% of the company's 14.4 million active Advantage Cards or less than 150,000 people. The spokeswoman pointed out that the decision to suspend payments using points would avoid hackers stealing the points to spend themselves.
The company also said that no credit card information had been accessed.
Although payments using points are suspended, Boots customers will still earn points when making purchases. Boots said: "We are writing to customers if we believe that their account has been affected, and if their Boots Advantage Card points have been used fraudulently we will, of course, replace them."
A similar incident happened at Tesco after the retail giant warned Clubcard holders that it believed there were attempts to use a database of stolen usernames and passwords from other platforms.
A Tesco spokesperson said: “We are aware of some fraudulent activity around the redemption of a small proportion of our customers’ Clubcard vouchers. Our internal systems picked this up quickly and we immediately took steps to protect our customers and restrict access to their accounts.”
Tesco said it has sent emails to everyone who were potentially affected, and added that nobody would lose their points and new vouchers would also be issued.
