Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 44m

Bananas in pajamas are coming down the stairs

1 4

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 1h

Omg

1 3

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 1h

Yeah I could easily see someone calling as saying something like “omg this is Mark my mom died please I need to cancel ASAP 😭😭😭” especially if TPUSA was already targeting them

1

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 2h

Boss: please work on this task

Me: ok please give me access to the tool

*multiple weeks pass of no access despite like 2x/week reminders*

Boss: wtf why have you made no progress?????????

3 15

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 2h

That chicken place now has an almost $16 sandwich… wat

Pretzel Cheddar Club Sandwich w/Chick-fil-A® Filet
$15.89 | 690 cal

3 6

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 2h

Bubbles Finding Nemo GIF

ALT: Bubbles Finding Nemo GIF

media.tenor.com

1 5

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 2h

Horneigh on mane

2 8

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

A one time flag isn’t enough to end a relationship. *Banks* routinely continue to do business with customers they’ve filed a SAR on lol

(Multiple is a different story)

2 3

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

Another job I once had was guest communications, I suspect you’ll get a generic “sorry 🥺🥺🥺 here’s some miles” because fraud doesn’t share methods/information. It sucks on the customer’s end for sure if it’s not really fraud

9

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

At Dave & Buster’s that’s just about enough for a finger trap

2

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

So you have a $250 gift card?

1

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

Just checked and yeah

1 1

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

Yeah the airlines have to balance between preventing this and making it legitimately possible for people who forgot their confirmation number to do things. It’s hard to get right and I would argue they’re too forgiving at the moment… but I can see the business logic of erring that way

1 1

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

Many companies have internal fraud departments that do their own due diligence

1 1

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

I suspect Mark didn’t leak his own PNR (which is the other way this happens) so social engineering by someone in the TPUSA mob is my guess

1 1

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

My guess is someone (probably some internet rando!) called the airline, did social engineering (ring ring “omg this is Mark, mom just died I need to cancel ASAP 😭😭😭”), and got an agent to cancel it. I admin an (unofficial) airline Facebook group and people post about similar all the time

1 1

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

Remember when Hastin and I got accused of literal crimes on that forum with absolutely 0 context? Wild times

1 1

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

Heck one situation happened where an actual United employee agent transferred a customer to a scammer’s phone number in exactly this manner (Search engine AI showed scam number) and the person handed over their credit card because who would expect that as a fraud vector! Many reasons this can happen

1 10

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

Now Y is at the airport and airline is aware of the fraud because X called freaking out about their miles disappearing. Hard to know from the airline’s POV if Y is innocent like in this situation or is the actual miles thief. Cancelling last minute gives them time to find out.

1 7

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

Sure because then you can solve for whatever the fraud flag was.

Example: Fraudster gets login info and steals miles from X. Y buys their ticket from a phone number they Googled where Google AI pulled the wrong phone number and it’s the fraudster. Books ticket using X’s miles.

1 6

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 4h

Yeah exactly. That + last name = do whatever you want to the reservation.

Marco Rubio, the then-sitting head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, once posted his AA confirmation number on Twitter. JD Vance posted his United loyalty number on Twitter. It happens all the time!

1 1

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 5h

It could be either but based on the timing my guess is the airline flagged it, there are lots of reasons that could’ve happened (they’re not gonna tell you)

I worked a lot w/ fraud team in ticketing for a non-airline and we had a very similar process where you wouldn’t ever know until at the gate

1 18

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 5h

My guess is someone (could be just an internet rando!) called the airline and used social engineering to get an agent to cancel the booking. It’s exceedingly easy since most airlines really don’t require much info to process these things

Mark Bray @mark-bray.bsky.social · 6h

“Someone” cancelled my family’s flight out of the country at the last second.

We got our boarding passes. We checked our bags. Went through security. Then at our gate our reservation ‘disappeared.’

6

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 5h

Honestly my guess is someone called the airline and used social engineering to get an agent to cancel it. I admin an (unofficial) airline Facebook group and people post about similar situations constantly, usually when they’ve leaked their own PNR though

1

Nothing Beats An Epcot Holiday @epcot.bsky.social · 5h

Airlines will usually flag the fraud ahead of time and forward to the fraud department, but cancel it at the last minute so as to not make the potential fraud suspect aware it was flagged

1 15