Chick-Fil-A Denies App Data Breach After Customers Report Mass Fraud

Chick-fil-A remains one of the most popular American fast-food stops of all time for a number of reasons. The fried chicken chain continues to display impressive acts of efficiency, per Fee.org, even using its own blueprints to help with COVID-19 testing in 2021. Looking past logistics, customers simply love all the classic offerings of its menu, like its beloved waffle fries. One of the most convenient and semi-recent additions to the world of fast-food joints like Chick-fil-A has been mobile apps. With endless opportunities to earn rewards and the ease of ordering ahead and skipping lines, it takes the term fast food to a whole other level. 

The Chick-fil-A One app itself was released in 2016, per Chick-fil-A, and has since proven to be a hit. The app had 13 million users in 2018, says Digiday, and that number continues to balloon each year. While the app has seemed to have no real big issues save small glitches since its implementation, things have since taken a turn for some customers this past Wednesday.

Per news outlet 11Alive, some users of the Chick-fil-A app have started complaining about a data breach, and it's an issue that has Chick-fil-A doing some investigating of its own. One customer claimed hackers got access to her card information through the Chick-fil-A app and even changed account emails in order to transfer money. Per Nation's Restaurant News, the complaints of a breach are bigger than just one person and actually started on a Facebook group for some residents in Paulding County in Atlanta. One hundred members complained about potential fraud in the Facebook group.

In response to the claims, the chicken chain released a statement via Twitter on January 4 stating it was looking into the incidents, and that this "breach" had only affected certain customers. Currently, the chain is claiming this is "not due to a compromise of Chick-fil-A Inc.'s internal systems."