How to stop fraudsters from hacking your McDonald’s app to order food

McDonald's customers have complained about their apps being hacked and ordering food (Photo: Shutterstock)McDonald's customers have complained about their apps being hacked and ordering food (Photo: Shutterstock)
McDonald's customers have complained about their apps being hacked and ordering food (Photo: Shutterstock)

McDonald’s customers across the world have been reporting incidences of hackers managing to gain control of their mobile apps and ordering food.

One man, Daniel Bird, 23, claimed he lost £150 when fraudsters hacked his phone app and placed 14 orders in less than a week.

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Mr Bird told The Sun: “"The whole thing was really stressful and confusing and at one point I had to borrow money from my family to pay for the toll road to get to work.

"I don't want anything to do with their app now."

How to stop the hack

Having your phone apps hacked is something that can easily happen if you are not careful with your online security.

Having a strong password on your phone is the first step. Phones that can be unlocked without a pin code or password are wide open for scammers if they can get control of your device.

Often malware from WiFi networks which are public or unprotected can make their way onto your phone, with some of the worst giving scammers remote control of your device.

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Make sure you do not use public wifi for important transactions or confidential actions such as mobile banking which can open you up to being scammed.

What are McDonald’s saying?

McDonald’s have not taken any responsibility for Mr Bird being scammed, and said they had helped him to update his passwords to stop the hack happening again.

A McDonald’s spokesperson said: “We are truly sorry for Mr Bird’s experience and our customer services team has been supporting him to ensure he has been reimbursed and to ensure his passwords have been updated to prevent this from happening again.

"We have taken all appropriate measures to keep personal information and transactions secure. McDonald’s does not collect or store credit card information as the My McDonald’s app only holds a “token” with the payment provider to allow purchases.

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"More than 120,000 customers use our App each month and we are determined to ensure they have the best possible user experience both on and offline.”

This article originally appeared on our sister site thestar.co.uk