Tauranga family ‘horrified’ to find credit card hacked through Lime scooters

A Tauranga family was “absolutely horrified” to find their credit card had been hacked through a Lime scooter.

Liz Kriel says it was around 10am on Saturday, and they’d parked on Marine Parade in Mount Maunganui some distance from their gelato-shop destination.

They’d done it on purpose, so their four-year-old could ride an e-scooter over, Kriel said.

They spotted two scooters parked close together, so her husband Jeáne grabbed out his phone and scanned the scooter’s code with the app – but it wouldn’t work.

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No warnings or alerts came up, it just wouldn’t scan. They tried another and the same thing happened.

Kriel immediately looked at her Internet banking to see if they were changed the initial fee, before Lime started charging based on time spent riding.

The fee of less than $2 had come out twice, but both of the scooters were still not working. They kept walking, and her husband started to contact Uber, which owns Lime.

Minutes later, Kriel got an alert saying someone had tried to log into their banking and Uber accounts from Christchurch.

The person was trying to use their credit card, and it looked like an international company was authorising the sales.

She was “horrified” and said they “instantly knew we were hacked by the Lime scooter”.

Her husband blocked all their cards, then they abandoned their original plan and drove to the nearest ANZ to cancel the cards completely and change their details.

The bank confirmed the Lime transaction was the source of the hack.

“I think it’s important to let people know,” she said. The ordeal had ruined their day, and cost them a lot of time and frustration.

Two hours later, while stuck in Tauranga traffic with a crying child – who didn’t get to ride an e-scooter – they were on the phone trying to report the incident.

They wanted to discuss what’d happened and share photos of the scooters’ barcodes in efforts to stop it happening to someone else.

Uber kept referring them to Lime, but the US-based company only had an automated robot phone service, “so there is no support”.

They submitted a report of what happened, and pictures of the scooters. Uber responded on Saturday morning and said there was no payment method on their account – but this wasn’t true.

“We were safe with the banking, but there will be some vulnerable people out there,” Kriel said.

She felt lucky they’d noticed quickly, and reacted with speed – but was worried about others who might not think to check their banking immediately.

Especially teens, who the scooters were popular with.

“This is frustrating dangerous and potentially a very risky situation for the next person,” Kriel said.

Lime has been approached for comment.