Crooks are taking a holiday. They’re counting on you to fund it.

For decades, cybercriminals have stolen roughly the same types of data. Biographical and personal details—like Social Security numbers, birthdates, addresses, and phone numbers—can be stolen to commit identity fraud. Credit card numbers, expiration dates, and CVC codes can be stolen to make fraudulent purchases. Usernames and passwords can, in the wrong hands, let a cybercriminal impersonate someone, steal sensitive photographs to later use for extortion, or abuse a reputation.

All of these attack models seek to turn sensitive or important data into currency. But an emerging form of digital fraud is targeting data that, when used strategically, practically is currency: Loyalty points.

Loyalty points programs are run by nearly every type of consumer-facing business today, from hotels to airlines to grocery stores to donut shops. As repeat customers accrue these points, they can exchange them for discounted prices on future purchases, cutting the costs of hotel stays, flights, rental cars, and even entire vacations.

But the value stored within these loyalty points makes them a high target for cybercrime, said Kim Sutherland, Global Head of Fraud and Identity at LexisNexis® Risk Solutions.

“Most loyalty currency is worth about one cent per point, and then there are premium programs that can be worth more than that,” Sutherland said, explaining that 100,000 airlines points, for example, can be worth $1,000 in the US. “Why criminals care so much about this is because most of us are not paying attention to our loyalty programs the same way we would our bank account.”

But diligence is much needed here, Sutherland said, noting that one Chicago teacher only learned that 240,000 of his airlines points had been stolen because he received a basic confirmation email about their use. In another example, a man’s airline miles were stolen and fraudulently used to book rental cars in New York and Memphis.

Today, on the Lock and Code podcast with host David Ruiz, we speak with Sutherland about loyalty points theft— how it happens, what companies are doing to protect customers, and what people can do to stay safe.

“Some of us don’t even know how to access those points, right? Or we don’t even know we’re accumulating them, but the fraudsters do.”

Tune in today.

You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and whatever preferred podcast platform you use.

For all our cybersecurity coverage, visit Malwarebytes Labs at malwarebytes.com/blog.

Show notes and credits:

Intro Music: “Spellbound” by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Outro Music: “Good God” by Wowa (unminus.com)

Listen up—Malwarebytes doesn't just talk cybersecurity, we provide it.

Protect yourself from online attacks that threaten your identity, your files, your system, and your financial well-being with our exclusive offer for Malwarebytes Premium for Lock and Code listeners.

The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco faces a unique challenge: How do you tell the story of one of history's most important storytellers? When Diane Disney Miller founded the museum, her goal was to let her father tell his own story. To achieve this, she amassed 30,000 artifacts and extensive archival media to create a deeply personal look at the man behind the magic.

"She really wanted to debunk these myths that he was not a family man, not committed to his friends and family," says Kirsten Komoroske, the executive director of the museum. "She wanted to tell the truth about all of the challenges, the failures, the setbacks."

Those challenges include the devastating loss of his first hit character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit; a polarizing animators' strike that led to Walt testifying before the House Un-American Activities Committee; and the lifelong smoking habit that ultimately ended his life at age 65.

Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Kirsten shares how the Walt Disney Family Museum stays fresh as a single-subject institution, the importance of a "good, hard failure," and why there is a plaque next to one of the museum's benches explicitly telling visitors to sit down.

Full transcript of this episode

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This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

Chapters

• (00:00) - Introduction
• (02:18) - Kirsten Komoroske's Museum Memories
• (06:20) - How Diane Disney Miller Shaped the Story
• (09:38) - Walt Disney's Failures and Perseverance
• (12:09) - The Animators' Strike and HUAC Testimony
• (19:00) - Becoming the Museum's Executive Director
• (24:46) - The Museum's Enormous Collection
• (28:21) - The Ribbon Room and Griffith Park Bench
• (37:08) - The Disneyland Model Explained

Images:
The museum exterior
Walt Disney
Narcissa Niblack Thorne
Thorne's "English Cottage Kitchen of the Queen Anne Period"
Gates of Hell
River of Stone
Faultline
Wood Line
Spire

Earth Wall

Videos:
Walt Disney Testifies at HUAC (1947)

At the Pacific Pinball Museum in Alameda, California, there are very few "don't touch" signs. In fact, this unique collection actually relies on visitors' touch to keep things running smoothly.

"They actually function better when they're getting played a lot," says Evan Phillippe, the museum's executive director. "They seize up and they freeze when they don't ... The more they get played, the happier they are."

Today on Call 'Em Like Museum, Evan talks about the myriad challenges of maintaining the world's largest playable pinball collection, including what to do with the 1,200 machines that don't fit in the current space. He explains how the museum educates visitors through rooms like "Beyond the Backglass," the first exhibit to celebrate women's contributions to pinball engineering, art, and software. Plus: The small army of volunteers that keeps the games working, what kids who grew up with iPads think of pinball, and the downsides of being thrifty as a nonprofit museum operator.

Full transcript of this episode

Subscribe to the newsletter

This episode was hosted, produced, and edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod

Listen to "Buzzers and Bells," my original short audio story about the Pacific Pinball Museum, on Twenty Thousand Hertz

Chapters
00:00 Introduction
03:01 Evan's First Museum Memory
07:12 A Tour of the Pacific Pinball Museum
11:46 Why It's a Museum, Not an Arcade
15:27 Fix-It Nights & Pinball Maintenance
21:46 Getting New Generations Into Pinball
27:19 Visitor Reactions & Pinball Nostalgia
33:17 Investing in the Museum's Future
40:50 Museum Inspiration & Tiny Details of Joy

Music: www.purple-planet.com

Images:
Museum exterior

Videos:
Suzanne Ciani on Omni: The New Frontier

On this episode, a story about a veterinarian and a story about a mermaid, both from our incredible StorySlams in Birmingham, Alabama. This episode was hosted by Suzanne Rust.

Storytellers:

Veronika Kiklevich treats a dog that’s swallowed something a bit unexpected.

Bob Byrd accidentally breaks his mother’s mermaid.

In 1942, eight men are sent from Nazi Germany to infiltrate America. Their mission: to sabotage critical infrastructure. Their problem: they're idiots. Operation Pastorius soon devolves into one of the most baffling failures of World War II.

For a list of sources, see the show notes at timharford.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Because our patrons asked for it, Bibbs and Witney present their picks for THE BEST MOVIE VILLAINS EVER!

It's over THREE HOURS of in-depth podcasting, with our host's individual picks for the worst a-holes to ever (dis)grace the silver screen!

Comic book supervillains, epic monsters, animated goofballs and some of the most disturbing individuals ever conceived by the human mind await you in this month's episode of THE IRON LIST.

Subscribe on Patreon at www.patreon.com/criticallyacclaimednetwork to get exclusive podcasts and exciting rewards, like exclusive series, commentary tracks, and much more!

Email us at letters@criticallyacclaimed.net, so we can read your correspondence and answer YOUR questions in future episodes!

Head on over to SNACKFAM! and listen to all of Angie and Henry Seibold's latest reviews of fascinating novelty snacks!