Groupon hack--a cautionary tale

DizMe

Here we gooooo...
Joined
Jun 4, 2007
I have 3 groupon accounts in my household. We use them when the Starbucks gift card deals come along. I learned the hard way today that you do not want Groupon to have your payment info on file. My account was hacked and the hacker charged $1000 to my account. Fortunately for me, I caught it immediately and was able to reset my pw. I was very lucky that the first thing they did was shop, not change my email address etc.

I was able to live chat with a rep at Groupon who told me not to worry and they'd have their fraud team investigate and they'd email me the details. No email and when I checked later, the purchases were still processing and the window to cancel was gone (second hard lesson: I trusted the rep to cancel the order in the 2-hour window to do so. I didn't even realize you could cancel a transaction within 2 hours of placing the order until I read about it when I googled "groupon hack"). The rep did remove my saved payment methods, at least.

I called my cc company and notified them. They cancelled my card. I removed all payment methods from the other groupon accounts in my family.

I initiated another live chat on Groupon and the second rep was awesome. She refunded the money right then and there. At this point I'll probably just cancel my account, although to do that you have to contact them and request it! Saving $10 on a Starbucks card just isn't worth it and that's all I've ever used it for.

I'm just warning people that Groupon has serious vulnerabilities so DON'T save your payment info on that site. In fact, it's probably safest not to save it anywhere. My Apple ID was hacked at Christmas. They had required a payment source on file when I set it up, but they no longer do that so you can remove it now if you have one.
 
Sorry to hear this happened to you but thank goodness you got it all cleared up.

For online transactions, I use a BlueBird AE card. Unlike the Walmart Money Card, you can put money on the BLueBird card for free (I do a direct deposit of $50 per week to my BlueBird account). I then have a "Set Aside" account set up within my BlueBird account which I move the money to. As I need to make purchases online I pull money from the Set Aside account into my regular BlueBird account and make the purchase. Then it is left at a $0 or near zero balance. Auto debits can't charge against it and fraudsters couldn't use the card to make purchases. Its very fast to transfer money back and forth from your Set Aside account to your main account and as I said, its free. Not everywhere accepts AE so its not for everyone, but it gives me a great peace of mind.
 
I never use my debit card online and you are protected under credit card laws. You credit card can be stolen everywhere not just online or groupon. I am just surprised groupon didn't ban you for having more than one account per person.
 
I never use my debit card online and you are protected under credit card laws. You credit card can be stolen everywhere not just online or groupon. I am just surprised groupon didn't ban you for having more than one account per person.
It's just a real pain to have to keep getting a new cc because someone hacked it or got the number somehow. I only have one account. My husband has one and so does my daughter. There's no Groupon rule against that; they're all adults.
 


Sorry to hear this happened to you but thank goodness you got it all cleared up.

For online transactions, I use a BlueBird AE card. Unlike the Walmart Money Card, you can put money on the BLueBird card for free (I do a direct deposit of $50 per week to my BlueBird account). I then have a "Set Aside" account set up within my BlueBird account which I move the money to. As I need to make purchases online I pull money from the Set Aside account into my regular BlueBird account and make the purchase. Then it is left at a $0 or near zero balance. Auto debits can't charge against it and fraudsters couldn't use the card to make purchases. Its very fast to transfer money back and forth from your Set Aside account to your main account and as I said, its free. Not everywhere accepts AE so its not for everyone, but it gives me a great peace of mind.
This sounds like a great plan! I'll look into it. Thanks!
 
This happened to me as well last year and Groupon was fantastic to deal with. I've lost count of how many times our info has been stolen-unfortunately it comes with the territory of doing so much online shopping.
 


I never use my debit card online and you are protected under credit card laws. You credit card can be stolen everywhere not just online or groupon. I am just surprised groupon didn't ban you for having more than one account per person.

The OP stated that they have 3 groupon accounts in the household, not per person. A cop-worker of mine had her account hacked last week. Someone went in and made 4 separate purchases for an attraction in Denver.
 
It's just a real pain to have to keep getting a new cc because someone hacked it or got the number somehow. I only have one account. My husband has one and so does my daughter. There's no Groupon rule against that; they're all adults.

Good to know. Unfortunately in the day and age we live in it is just the name of the game and while it is inconvinient is just part of life. One thing that can help is make sure you have a strong password for your accounts.
 
Thanks for the heads up. I went in and deleted all of my saved payment information. I buy so little through Groupon it was kind of dumb of me to have them on there in the first place.
 
I had the same thing happen to me last year. Someone bought a $2000 drone!! It charged my debit card and left me with less than $1 in my checking account. Fortunately, as soon as the charge went through, I got the text alert on my phone. I went online to the Groupon site and cancelled the order right away, but the funds were still held in "pending" status with my checking account. I contacted my bank and showed them what happened and they waived the overdraft fees that I was hit with while the credit was pending. It was a total PITA and I immediately closed my Groupon account. I have seen some great local offers come up, but there's no way I will start buying from them again.
 
We were hacked on iTunes. IMPOSSIBLE to get ahold of them. I called credit card the next day & the charges hadn't even hit their computers so we just cancelled the card. Now we only use prepaid iTunes cards.
I try VERY hard to NOT keep my CC info on file on ANY website--and immediately delete it if I find it is being saved.
Kohls accounts were hacked a while back--luckily I always checked out as a guest so it never saved my info, so no issues.
 
Thanks- I just looked at mine and I had a stupid password and my cc was on file. Changed and deleted.
 
I can't figure out how to remove my credit card info from iTunes - is there even a way?
 
im not sure why people are so afraid of putting their credit card numbers on the internet. Most credit card policies is that if you can within xx days, dispute it, you arent responsible for it, they cancel ur card, send you a new one and its all done with. A debit card is a different story though. My mom called me last night via citi, i guess she got 3 fraud charges, i told them my mom didnt use her card anywhere in the past 15 days, they said okay, we will investigate... we cancel your card and a new one is coming to you. easy peasy...

Groupon, well, i had a nightmare where one of my groupon didnt send payment to the store so the day we activated our membership, it was automatically cancelled by the vendor the next day. They claim is was due to non-payment. Called groupon, said payment went through... it was headaching... :\
 
Hello DizMe! So sorry to hear about your Groupon account being hacked. I just deleted my cc info from there and LivingSocial. Thanks for the heads up. All that aside, hope you're doing well otherwise.
 
Thank you OP. Deleted from groupon. I too would like to know how to delete from ITunes. Just looked on ITunes nothing stored there
 
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Hello DizMe! So sorry to hear about your Groupon account being hacked. I just deleted my cc info from there and LivingSocial. Thanks for the heads up. All that aside, hope you're doing well otherwise.
Hi! Yep...doing well other than a blip here and there :) You going to Dapper Day? I'm going to miss it this time, sadly :(
 

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