Account blocked due to unauthorised access

It can be a couple of minutes, it can be hours. But the hours can be 3 or 4, not usually this long!

But the fact it’s so long makes me wonder if it’s gone somewhere else, like the bottom of the bottom priority lists, which it really shouldn’t.

@AlanDoe any ideas?

I see a few people messaging Monzo to report the same issue on Twitter. Wonder if there was a more widespread issue in general.

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If that’s the case at least they’ve detected it and safe guarded accounts by disabling them for manual checks.

Hopefully they’ll message ya back soon, you’d think these cases would be high priority to get pretty much instant replies.

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Nearly 17 hours since reporting. Clearly the lowest of priorities right now.

Strange that they’re taking so long. I’d have thought this type of thing would be high priority, especially given how concerned customers who receive this message would understandably be.

Hope it gets sorted soon.

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I’m sure it is a high priority but it has to go to the fraud team, not for anyone to deal with

Or, if it’s a more widespread issue (as has been suggested a few posts above by someone looking at Twitter), they could be dealing with an unusually large volume of support requests causing delays.

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My understanding is that we’re seeing a really high number of calls and conversations this weekend. I’m not back at work until Tuesday but @cookywook might have some more context here.

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Apparently my account was the target of a recent phishing attempt. They’ve ignored all my questions about whether someone did log in or did attempt a payment though.

17 hours to get a very stock message is poor. It’s also now been an hour since I instantly replied to the message and I’ve had no response again.

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I’ve read through the above, and ignoring the delayed support response for now, am I right in thinking the only alarm bell was receiving the magic link email?

If so, anyone can enter any old email into a logged-out monzo app and if it is a valid email (registered with a Monzo account), then a magic link email will be sent to that email address. You then click on the button in the magic link email and you’re logged in to Monzo.

So there are 2 basic steps to get into a Monzo account:

  • You must know the email address
  • You must have access to the email account, to get to the Magic Link email

If you have both, you’ve got access. If you’ve got only the first, you can’t get access. I’m guessing your email account isn’t compromised and is as protected as possible?

It does sound to me like someone has been entering random (or targetted) email addresses into a Monzo app login screen - and seeing what happens. Possibly someone watching this too - where else is so much public information about Monzo users available. Caution…

EDIT: You can be logged into the Monzo app at the same time on 2 devices if they are different platforms (1 is iOS, 1 is Android)

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You also need your Monzo card PIN to log in now after clicking on the magic link, so not just the email and access to the email account.

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And you’ll need your pin for making any financial transactions, so in theory there’s multiple steps to get access, and a final part to actually steal your money.

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@brandscill check your emails rules for any auto forwarding or other rules that you didn’t setup.

Check on both your online account and email clients such as outlook desktop.

Just to clarify is it a Gmail email address?

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FYI: it doesn’t even have to be an email address registered with Monzo. Every time I’ve had to log back in to Monzo (new phone/app being a pain and needing a reinstall) I forget which account I registered with and inevitably start with an incorrect guess.

It sends a magic link to any address and if there isn’t a bank account associated with it you just confuse the hell out of the app when you click it.

Seems it was enough of an alarm bell for monzo to block my account and then send that notification.

Get the impression a lot of people got a magic link email yesterday which triggered this response.

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There has been no unauthorized access to my email.

this has just happened to me , having had to factory re set my phone a couple of days ago , i tried to send some one some money for a birthday present and then it came up you need to confirm my identntity , done the video and now have to wait , it blocks the card an every thing , whilst im slightly annoyed that it happened at the weekend , i cant fault the customer service agent i spoke to who re assured me that its just a matter of some specalist team checking things as the factory re set will have caused a panic alarm at monzo as they will think its a new phone aparently , leaves me with out access to my account just now but i can wait for the 24 hrs to get it sorted , also i had an almost immediate response to my chat request so i cant fault that either

well :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: :+1: to the monzo team all sorted in the space of a couple of hrs , i must just hit it lucky with the customer service , both chats and how quickly they deal with things :smiley:

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Probably falls into a different priority queue and worked a bit quicker. Glad you got it resolved

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