Virtual Mastercard Gift Cards Hacked! Check Your Accounts
Over the last few days, we have heard of multiple reports of people have their virtual Mastercard gift cards drained, or not being able to access them at all.
These Mastercard gift cards are issued virtually, and you never receive a physical credit card. You would normally get these cards when redeeming Swagbucks, through the Fluz Power Portal, or if you’re just purchasing virtual Mastercard gift cards.
These Mastercard gift cards (MCGC) are issued by Blackhawk and they can be activated and registered on Blackhawk’s website or at MyPrepaidCenter.com.
Reports of these issues are coming from all over the place. The first reports surfaced on Reddit, at Miles to Memories and Doctor of Credit. Many people are seeing charges they don’t recognize. Other are not able to access their gift card accounts at all.
Swagbucks made a statement about the issue:
Thank you for your inquiry regarding your Virtual Prepaid Mastercard rewards card, issued via MyPrepaidCenter.com. We have heard from a number of members recently that experienced an issue accessing funds that were loaded onto these prepaid rewards cards. At this time, no other rewards that Swagbucks offers its members appear to be affected, and we are unaware of any security vulnerability affecting our service. As a safety precaution, we have temporarily removed the Virtual Prepaid Mastercard rewards offerings from our rewards redemption site.
We are actively investigating your concern and will update your support ticket with additional information as it becomes available. In the interim, we appreciate your patience as we work with MyPrepaidCenter.com to determine the source of the problem.
But as I mentioned above, this problem affects others as well, not just those who redeemed points through Swagbucks.
Guru’s Wrap-up
So fare there’s no official statement from Blackhawk on what has actually happened. But it does seem to be a hack of some kind, either external or internal. It’s also possible that the issue was caught early on and was blocked in time, as many people are only seeing pending charges.
Check your accounts and let me know if your virtual Mastercard gift cards are hacked, or if you are experiencing any other issues. Also let us know how you received these gift cards and what charges you see.
