Robinhood blasted after customer accounts hacked, cash and crypto stolen

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Last Updated on 10 October 2020 by CryptoTips.eu

Jeroen Kok

Jeroen is one of the lead copywriters on Cryptotips.eu and discusses all recent events in the crypto market. This includes news updates, but also price analyzes and more. He developed his passion for cryptocurrency during the bull run in 2017. He has learned a lot since then. The combination of cryptocurrency and creative writing is perfect for Jeroen and an excellent way to share his knowledge with a wide audience. Find me on LinkedIn / jeroen@cryptotips.eu
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Social media platforms Twitter and Reddit were flooded with messages of angry Robinhood users who said their accounts had been hacked and their money stolen. The popular trading app, which is used in the US, was blamed for non-existing customer service and not responding to email tickets.

The story was especially frightening for one particular user who said he used KuCoin before and then switched to Robinhood. In both occasions in the past weeks, the accounts were emptied after a hack.

Advertentie.

Customer Service complaints

The newest Fintech companies share the same customer service base as, for example, Uber does, meaning you can send a help email but there is no one to call. In case of an emptying of your account because of a hack, a terrifying user experience of course. As Americans are used to having good customer service at most of their brick and mortar shops, the introduction to the non-existing customer service of a new Silicon Valley company is quite something else.

An anonymous user on Reddit stated:

My Robinhood account was also hacked. I received a bunch of notifications that all my stocks were sold. Shortly after, I received another notification that $—- was withdrawn by a company (I don’t recall the name except for the last part of it was “digital”) I can no longer access my account and Im not even able to reset my password to get access to the account again because nothing is coming through my email from them. I’ve sent an email to them but Ive yet to hear back.

Revolut

The company, which has popularized trading in both stocks and crypto for first-time entrants into the market in the US, has in the meantime admitted the breach, but states that the hack did not occur on their platform but rather because of an email hack at the customer’s email accounts themselves.

A limited number of customers appear to have had their Robinhood account targeted by cyber criminals because of their personal email account (that which is associated with their Robinhood account) being compromised outside of Robinhood.

On Bloomberg, a man from Connecticut named Bill Hurley, stated that his Robinhood account had been emptied and that stock and Bitcoin had been transferred to Revolut, a London based exchange, in September already. He also spoke of Robinhood’s poor customer service, which only contacted him two weeks later, stating:

They’ve had more than enough time to deal with this.