Starbucks iPhone app can provide thieves with free coffee

Coffee drinkers using the new Starbucks Reward Card iPhone app are vulnerable to a venti-size scam that could drain their wallets while a hacker’s cup is filled.
The app allows customers to pay for their order by scanning a bar code on their phone to the in-store register.

Convenient, yes. Not according to Kelley Langford, vice president of sales and marketing at System Innovators. Langford told Mobile Commerce Daily that a hacker can drain the Starbuck’s account of an unsuspecting victim in a scam that takes about 90 seconds to execute.

First, Langford said, you open the Starbucks app on someone’s iPhone (you must physically have the iPhone in hand — the scam will not work over a Wi-Fi network ). Then you click "Press to Pay," which reveals the bar code attached to the account.