Deliveroo fraud sees members billed for phantom food
Takeaway food delivery specialists Deliveroo have come under the spotlight after a number of customers came forward to complain of being charged hundreds of pounds for food they did not order.
The scam is believed to involve stolen passwords traded online from previous hacking breaches with other companies which allows hungry criminals to easily log-in to victim’s accounts to have food sent to alternative addresses.
This is made even easier by Deliveroo’s removal of several security steps in ordering by saving account details, which make it easier and quicker to order grub by both genuine customers and fraudsters.
Speaking to the BBC’s Watchdog programme Judith MacFadyen remarked: “I noticed that I had a 'thank you' email from Deliveroo for a burger joint in Chiswick. I thought that was really odd so I went on to my account and had a look and there had been four orders that afternoon to a couple of addresses in London."
Another customer was surprised to be billed over £100 for chicken, waffles and chips that they had not ordered. All affected customers subsequently received their money back.
In a statement Deliveroo said: "A Deliveroo spokesperson said: "Customer security is crucial to us and instances of fraud on our system are rare, but where customers have encountered a problem we take it very seriously. We are aware of these cases raised by Watchdog - they involve stolen food, not credit card numbers. These issues occur when criminals use a password stolen from another service unrelated to our company in a major data breach. The stolen password is then used to fraudulently access someone's account. This is why we urge customers to use strong and unique passwords for every service they use.
"... we can assure customers that we are constantly improving our security measures, and make regular upgrades to our practices. Recently, this included frequently asking customers to verify themselves when entering a new address."
Such preventative measures aim to curtail future incidents as revenues rise - they reached £130m over the summer.