flying_bubba

There's no question in my mind that these are hacked. There are just too many people selling these things for me to believe otherwise and the code they have is child's play compared to the stuff hackers break these days. If you don't believe me, then take a trip to China or most of Asia and see what you can buy for $1 (USD). I would stay away from these like the plague.

As far as putting an already used code into united.bomb, I did this on accident (I had two legitimate codes and forgot which one I had already used, then I guessed wrong) the site simply says, this code is no longer valid.

I'm not sure how UA will track this problem. I'm guessing they will look for people who have used more than 2 or 4 of them and then see if there is a pattern.

Bubba

RichLond

funny (ie. STUPID) thing is my very valid Ameniti 100usd cert never works.... There is always a problem applying it even when i know i meet all the conditions listed. The one time I used the type of cert discussed here it worked on pretty much every flight and fare.

rich

FlyingBear

Actually, I was thinking more of an issue of probability. If you're randomly generating these numbers with a search, at some point you should stumble on a legitimate number waiting to be used. The fake gets used before the legit one. The person with the legit one calls in and finds out why their code says its already been used. Given the recent events though, I suspect that they will get around to taking care of it anyways. Well, as much as .bomb takes care of anything.

United737522

Word of advice: If you have purchased an ecert from eBay, obtained it from someone who had more than what would be considered reasonable, or have a feeling it is not legit; I suggest you not use them at this point.

jan_az

Does that include the ones that you had on offer in CC a few months ago?

flying_bubba

What's the scoop? I would agree that it would be wise not sue these, but do you have more info than the rest of us?

Bubba

grayland

Does anyone think that it is NOT a criminal act if these certs have been hacked or stolen? Who would want to have to explain where they got the certificate if an investigation is started? They have a record of who used them.

I would advise everyone to NOT use these unless you are certain that they came from CS to the person you got them from. Anything else is both wrong and very dangerous.

holtju2

Very true.

Can you imagine that there was recently a thread on MR forum where one FT was booking OW's from TPA/PHL to LAS/PHX for himself and to other FT members for certain flights?

These fares were on V class and OW was $99 and with a $100 ecert applied I believe that the total came to $30 to $40. These involved PS flights.

Should we now call these flights UA MP Audit Express-flights? The thread is long gone but even then I warned FT members that they should not book them.

cepheid

If known to be hacked or stolen, it is absolutely fraud and/or theft. However, many people can unfortunately easily justify such things because it appears "victimless" (even though it clearly is not). Some examples of such justification: "They give them out like candy anyway." "I wouldn't buy the ticket otherwise." "They factor it into the ticket prices." "It'll be outweighed by the number of certs that expire unused." Etc. I've probably been guilty of such justification on occasions, too, although I haven't used any certs that are knowingly hacked/stolen.

Of course, prior to these certs totally flooding the black market, nobody suspected they might be hacked or stolen... it's only with the recent deluge of certs that this possibility has been gaining serious credence. I wouldn't really blame anyone who used these certs prior to a couple of weeks ago as they probably acted in good faith... nowadays, more caution seems strongly warranted (as you have recommended).

Unfortunately, I have one of these certs whose origin cannot be verified... it's quite possible the origin is legit, but as of right now there's no way to know, and I'm not sure what to do with the cert at this point, so it might end up being a pretty raw deal for me.

rch4u

I know with 99.99% certainty that some people are hacking codes to produce these e-certs. I can't help but think that United will catch on sooner rather than later and track these people down? United737522's post seems to be foreshadowing this inevitability.

grayland

Can you ask the person you got it from where they got it?
If they got it from UA Customer Service...then it would be fine.
If they bought it or traded for it....then I would be very careful.
The "users" are the ones who are going to be investigated as they are the ones on record.

rch4u

Right, and the defense would be "Oh, I had no way of knowing where these came from ... and regardless, they are fully transferable."

cepheid

If/when they do, you think they'll try to go after passengers retroactively, or only for those with still-upcoming itineraries? One would hope the latter, and by the time they do enforce it I suspect that would really be the only option anyway, since the manpower to search retroactively would probably be prohibitive (cost-wise, relative to what they could possibly recover by charging/suing previous users of illicit certs).

I can and did, and got an honest response... and the origin cannot be verified. I don't blame the person at all, and this was before the recent "surplus" came to light... still, the cert may be unusable for me at this point.

True, but I don't know if anything can actually be done to the "users," since they can claim they were acting in good faith, as many/most probably were/are, and the e-certs explicitly say they are transferable. The above can't really be refuted, barring eBay records showing otherwise. It's kind of like prosecuting someone for receiving stolen goods... hard to do if the recipient acted in good faith and didn't have any reasonable way of knowing the goods were stolen. That doesn't mean the recipient gets to keep the goods, of course, which is why I was asking about retroactive charges.

rch4u

Yes. (... which is to say, hopefully both.)

grayland

But....UA "security" is known to be very heavy handed and quickly closes and locks MP accounts. Would anyone want to go through all of that for a couple of questionable $100. certs?