Unsettling - has this happened to anyone else?

[MamaO]

I belong to a couple other survey sites and back in September noticed I had not received anything from them in quite awhile. I emailed them, and they located an account with my name on it but with a different email address. After further research, they emailed me again and said it seemed my account had been hacked into, the email address changed, and my points redeemed for a $20 Amazon gift card! They took me through all the steps to restore my account and also gave me back my points. It is a reputable site, but still, this is not very reassuring. Anyone know if this is a common occurence and has it happened to anyone else on any site?

[sammielynn]

That would make me uneasy. But we live in a cyber age and we are all at risk of this sort of thing.

[marcymajor]

Jeanne-r u talking about a survey site with the letters v.o.? if so, some of what you are saying happened to me. i had not gotten anything from them in a long time so i tried to log in one day and the site did not know me or my email address. i sent them an email and they said that they had a different birthday for me and needed my correct date of birth. i gave them that a while ago but have never heard anything back from them. makes you kinda wonder how and why someone would want to hack a survey site just for a $20 amazon gift card. scary - to say the least.

[MamaO]

Yes, Marcy, that is the one. I had kind of forgotten about it as I initially emailed them in early September. It took quite a while between emails but they did answer and everything was resolved.

[marcymajor]

Jeanne-i was just looking at some old emails and noticed that i sent them my first email on 10/4 and it took them until 10/26 to respond back asking for my date of birth. since then i have heard nothing from them at all. wonder if they are ever going to get back to me and if all the money that i made taking their surveys on their website is gone. it really makes you think twice about joining different survey sites if hackers can get into it that easily and steal your money and your information.

[liviesmomma]

If i am thinking about the same survey site with those initials then I havent had that problem with them and have been with them for a few years. Would this site also have recently gotten rid of Visa gift cards? If so then we are all thinking of the same one.

[marcymajor]

Jeanne-i finally got an email back from them yesterday and it seems that my account was hacked into also and someone stole $180 out of my account in amazon gift certificates (9x) but they will replace the money that was taken. they started sending me surveys again but now i am totally leery about getting back on their website for fear of this happening again. i sent them an email asking if i could just totally cash out and am waiting to hear back. hopefully it won't take too long to hear back from them. makes you wonder why someone would steal money from someone on a survey site. kinda scary when you think about it.

[MamaO]

If i am thinking about the same survey site with those initials then I havent had that problem with them and have been with them for a few years. Would this site also have recently gotten rid of Visa gift cards? If so then we are all thinking of the same one.

I never cashed out for a VISA GC from this site so don't know if they recently discontinued them. And since the 'hackers' changed my email address, I would not have heard if they sent an email about discontinuing VISA gift cards. I usually cashed out for Marriott GCs.

[MamaO]

Jeanne-i finally got an email back from them yesterday and it seems that my account was hacked into also and someone stole $180 out of my account in amazon gift certificates (9x) but they will replace the money that was taken. they started sending me surveys again but now i am totally leery about getting back on their website for fear of this happening again. i sent them an email asking if i could just totally cash out and am waiting to hear back. hopefully it won't take too long to hear back from them. makes you wonder why someone would steal money from someone on a survey site. kinda scary when you think about it.

Marcy, Sorry to hear that the same thing happened to you - sounds like whoever did this probably had a great time buying stuff from Amazon! It just makes me hope that most sites have security in place to keep this from happening. At alot of sites (reward and otherwise), I get an email if there are any changes made to information in my account (including changing the email address) and they ask me to contact them if I did not initiate this change. I followed several of their security suggestions but did not change my email address; I have had it for a long time and it would be as much hassle to change that as it would be to move and change my physical address!