Popular investing app Robinhood, which was just valued at $11.7 billion, is urging customers to be wary after it discovered that some accounts were hacked. However, the company said the issue did not occur from a data breach or cyberattack incident on their side as customer’s email accounts were compromised outside of its platform.
“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,” a Robinhood spokesman told Bloomberg.
The brokerage further stated they are actively working with those impacted to secure their accounts.
At least five users reportedly complained that hackers liquidated their investments and withdrew balances to online payment apps, including Revolut, which said it has been made aware of the issue and is investigating the matter.
However, the exact number of affected accounts could not be determined. A company spokesperson said not all of the platform's customers were alerted, only those whose credentials were affected by this discovery.
“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 Shortly after, I received another notification that $—- was withdrawn by a company (I don’t recall the name except for the last part of it was 'digital') I can no longer access my account and I'm not even able to reset my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 I've yet to hear back,” another user states.
Angry users took to Twitter and Reddit to blast Robinhood after the company’s support team failed to provide any meaningful help to stop the theft of their money. While the theft was in progress, investors that saw their money had vanished only received a frustrating email that reads:
“We understand the sensitivity of your situation and will be escalating the matter to our fraud investigations team. Please be aware that this process may take a few weeks, and the team working on your case won’t be able to provide constant updates.”
A fair number of Robinhood users were frustrated with trying to figure out how they had fared many times throughout this year. At the time, clients complained about not having access to their accounts and enduring long waiting times for customer service.
Robinhood’s CEO blamed the shutdown on volatile market conditions, record trading volume, and record new account requests, which caused stress on the company’s infrastructure.
