Park-n-Fly Confirms Some Customer Credit Cards Compromised

Published

April 18, 2018

Christine DiGangi is the former Deputy Managing Editor - Engagement for Credit.com and covered a variety of personal finance topics. Her writing has been featured on USA Today, MSN, Yahoo! Finance and The New York Times International Weekly, among other outlets.

Park-n-Fly, an Atlanta-based company that allows travelers to reserve airport parking spots, experienced a malware attack on its website that seems to have compromised customer payment information. Michael Deaderick, Park-n-Fly’s chief financial officer, told Credit.com the company hired two security firms to investigate the issue, during which they found and removed trojans from Park-n-Fly’s website.

Deaderick said the company experienced an increase in customer service complaints in September about fraudulent activity on cards used with Park-n-Fly, which prompted the investigation.

“It went from about two a week to 10 or 15 a week,” Deaderick said about the customer service reports. He said the firms Park-n-Fly hired to investigate the incident detected no signs anyone had accessed the company’s internal systems, and the issue indicated a problem with the website. Once the company removed the trojans from the website, the increased flow of complaints subsided. In all, Park-n-Fly has received more than 100 reports from customers who reserved a spot through Park-n-Fly, then saw a fraudulent charge on their credit cards.

Cybersecurity writer Brian Krebs first reported the fraudulent activity related to Park-n-Fly customers on Dec. 16. Deaderick said they have seen an increase in complaints, now that customers have heard about the attack and have checked their accounts for fraud. Though they’ve received only about 100 calls, Deaderick said they think about 700 customers may have been affected. The company allows customers to make online reservations for airport parking spots at 80 Park-n-Fly and affiliated U.S. locations.

“We’ve made a couple changes that seem to have corrected most of the situation,” Deaderick said, but he also said the company’s more than 10 years of e-commerce experience has taught them the need to frequently adapt to fight security threats. “We think this is just going to be an ongoing battle we’ll have to wage.”

Deaderick emphasized the security changes and said customers can confidently reserve parking spaces for holiday travel, but customers are also welcome to call the customer service phone number listed on their website and make a reservation over the phone.

No matter the time of year, it’s important to monitor your bank accounts and credit for signs of fraud and identity theft, but it’s particularly important to do around the holidays, when consumers spend more money and tend to deal with more life distractions. It helps to review your credit and debit card transactions on a daily basis, so you can quickly report and stop fraud, and you can also get a free credit report summary through Credit.com every 30 days.