Rewards for loyal spenders are ‘a honey pot for hackers’

The punch cards stuffed in your wallet know next to nothing about you, except maybe how many frozen yogurts you still need to buy to get a free one. But loyalty programs, as they shift from paper and plastic to apps and websites, are increasingly tracking a currency that can be more valuable than how much you spend: personal data. One loyalty-fraud prevention group estimates, conservatively, that $1 billion a year is lost to crime related to the programs.

Source: www.nytimes.com