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My flight was cancelled recently and I received a text messaage from FlightClaim suggesting I make a compensation claim through them. Little do they know that I emailed the airline the day after my flight cancellation and know how to pursue a UK261 claim.
These messages appear to be happening because of a data breach somewhere. This has been happening over the past several weeks.
I’ve started this thread to raise awareness for HfPers who don’t bother reading FlyerChitChat.
The airlines seem to be keeping quiet about this. I’ve emailed their Data Protection Office address, but havent had a reply.
I’m just annoyed about this, but am intrigued about what the outcome will be.
Who was your cancelled flight with? Mine (in May) was with BA and I got the text within 60 mins of being turfed off the plane when the flight was cancelled. The text came quicker than any official notification of the cancellation from BA…
My flight was with BA. But this seems to be happening to passengers on other airlines as well.
This has been mentioned a few times. I think there is a thread about it in the BA forum rather than the flight changes one,
There is a thread about this on the BA flyer talk board as well.
BA are certainly aware of it but are apparently having issues tracking down who is doing this because so many different systems are involved. It maybe someone accessing airport rather than airline systems directly for example.
BA have now acknowledged my complaint and say they are investigating. It’s taken them 16 days to respond.
BA have replied today as follows
“We are writing in relation to your complaint dated X Jun 2023 to update you on our investigation into this matter.
We understand that a number of individuals received unsolicited text messages inviting them to make a compensation claim in relation to delayed and cancelled flights.
From our investigations, we believe that the unsolicited text messages were a result of data being accessed by a third party from one of our service providers’ systems. We use the service provider in question to provide our customers with notifications of flight disruptions and we provide them with limited data, such as your phone number, for this purpose. It seems that this limited data was made available to flightclaim.me, which has then used it to send unsolicited text messages, without our knowledge or authorisation.
We have informed our service provider and there have been no reported incidents since. We are also implementing various additional cybersecurity measures and restrictions of access for this service provider to ensure that this does not recur. We have also provided details of our investigation to the ICO.
We would like to reiterate that the security of customer personal data is highly important to us, and we would like to thank you for reporting this issue to us and your cooperation in our investigation into the matter.”
Will the ICO do anything at all?
« We have informed our service provider and there have been no reported incidents since.«
Yeah, right. I received one for a delay earlier this month. They don’t specify exactly when they informed their service provider. It may have been yesterday.
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