Possible hacking

jazminjewelyoga

Hi guys

this is my first post so a hello.

I have renters insurance with urban jungle.

yesterday I received an email that alarmed me - I had been awarded £18 of referral credit and I haven’t disclosed my referral code to anyone.

I requested the details of the person who signed up - to which they refused citing data protection. Fair enough they do not have to disclose it.

I have come back to them with a link to action fraud - a little background - I have been hacked and stolen from and stalked for the last decade at least. It has pushed me to homelessness and the brink of suicide and even if this has had a positive outcome, if I can catch someone who thinks it’s okay to break my boundaries and is directly in violation of the computer misuse act after years of abuse I will most definitely do it.

he has come back to me saying it’s an automated email all customers receive.

I don’t believe it at all and am thinking of reporting the company to action fraud

before you all report me to the men in white coats…I was the victim of an assault and believe that my perpetrators got very wealthy over the time they were victimising me. Any small victory is a step closer to throwing the whole thing over.

[Deleted User]

You won't have been hacked. It's either been sent in error or, as they say, has been sent to everyone.  

If you have concerns about any of your accounts, change the passwords.

anotheruser

And have a KFC with the money.

Ergates

jazminjewelyoga said:

I requested the details of the person who signed up - to which they refused citing data protection. Fair enough they do not have to disclose it.

It's not that they *don't have* to disclose it - they're not allowed to disclose it.

I don’t believe it at all and am thinking of reporting the company to action fraud

What is it that you believe has happened?  Is this Urban Jungle you're talking about?  What crime is it you think they may be guilty of?   If they gave you the referral code in the first place - they wouldn't need to conduct any hacking to get it, as they'd already know it.

p00hsticks

Ergates said:

jazminjewelyoga said:

I requested the details of the person who signed up - to which they refused citing data protection. Fair enough they do not have to disclose it.

It's not that they *don't have* to disclose it - they're not allowed to disclose it.

I don’t believe it at all and am thinking of reporting the company to action fraud

What is it that you believe has happened?  Is this Urban Jungle you're talking about?  What crime is it you think they may be guilty of?   If they gave you the referral code in the first place - they wouldn't need to conduct any hacking to get it, as they'd already know it.

Referral codes are usually handed out by a company to customers to pass on to other people who might use them - the person whose code it is then gets a reward of some kind if they recommend a new customer who quotes the referral code (I think there's even a part of this forum for exchanging such codes). It sounds like the OP has never passed their code on to anyone but is now getting credits from the company, suggesting that at least one other person has used their code.

Mnoee

It's probably just someone mistyping a similar code that someone else has given them - if it's a random string of numbers and letters then O0, lI, etc can be easily mistaken if it's not copied and pasted. 

I really can't see how a hacker who stole your referral code to sign up for insurance would profit in any way. 

Ergates

p00hsticks said:

Ergates said:

jazminjewelyoga said:

I requested the details of the person who signed up - to which they refused citing data protection. Fair enough they do not have to disclose it.

It's not that they *don't have* to disclose it - they're not allowed to disclose it.

I don’t believe it at all and am thinking of reporting the company to action fraud

What is it that you believe has happened?  Is this Urban Jungle you're talking about?  What crime is it you think they may be guilty of?   If they gave you the referral code in the first place - they wouldn't need to conduct any hacking to get it, as they'd already know it.

Referral codes are usually handed out by a company to customers to pass on to other people who might use them - the person whose code it is then gets a reward of some kind if they recommend a new customer who quotes the referral code (I think there's even a part of this forum for exchanging such codes). It sounds like the OP has never passed their code on to anyone but is now getting credits from the company, suggesting that at least one other person has used their code.

Yes, I get how referral codes work - but the OP said that they spoke to the company, didn't believe what they said and was considering reporting them to action fraud.   At least that's it sounds like they meant.   Which would imply they though Urban Jungle was guilty of... something - which is what I was querying.

mattyprice4004

No one is in breach of the computer misuse act, no one has broken any 'personal boundaries' - it'll literally be someone keying in a slightly different code by accident. 
When I owned a business I had someone going ballistic because he hadn't consented to us sending him emails about promotions etc - he wasn't a customer and never had been. I can only assume that was a similar issue, but he still went on about breach of privacy, compensation etc despite it being literally nothing to do with us. 

Mistakes happen - the best advice is to let it go as you're going to get precisely nothing aside from frustration by pursuing this. 

Sandtree

jazminjewelyoga said:

he has come back to me saying it’s an automated email all customers receive.

Not sure if this is to mean that they've had some system error and notified everyone they are getting £18, that they've intentionally given everyone £18 or that you've misread the email and its just letting you know you would get £18 if you were to successfully refer someone.


Were it not for this one line I'd have gone with most other suggestions here that someone has simply mistyped the referral code of their friend/associate and coincidentally managed to type your code.

Unfortunately some are too quick to assume the worst, back in my Tesco's days had a Mrs ABC call up causing merry hell about how we'd stolen her club card points... a quick check and was able to advise her that her secondary card holder Mr ABC had used all the points to buy flowers from the XXX branch on 1st Jul... was silence, then an under the breath mutter of "but he said he was away on business that week" and then the phone slammed down but obv missed the receiver as could hear her screaming out to "Mr ABC" saying he'd been seeing that s**t again (not sure why its the womans fault the guy is cheating on her and using her clubcard points to do so)