The story of Nandan Kumar, an engineer who hacked into an airline's site to recover his suitcase, transcended on social media, going viral, as he placed the company between the sword and the wall after denouncing his deficiency in the area of customer service and cybersecurity.
It was on March 28 when the Java software engineer and programmer opened a thread on his Twitter to tell about his travel experience and troubleshooting with the airline IndiGo.
He reported that he had traveled from Patna to Bangalore, India, on flight 6E-185, when the airline made a mistake sending his suitcase to another passenger and vice versa. He said he could understand it because both bags were the same, except for a few minor differences. He assured that he had not paid much attention to the details of the luggage because he trusted the company a lot and believed that everything was in order.
It was until he arrived home that his wife told him that the suitcase they had brought looked different from his own, besides that they did not use ties to close it. At that time, he called the airline to report the problem.
However, the response from customer service is not what you expected, as they did not provide immediate help to retrieve your luggage.
Although they did not give him a quick solution and refused to give him the contact details of who had taken his suitcase, he waited, as the customer service members told him that they would call him when they contacted the other passenger.
After a day of waiting, he did not receive any calls, so he decided to take action on the matter and began to investigate inside the site of the IndiGo platform, trying to find for himself the passenger who had his suitcase.
“So, today morning I started doing research on Indigo's website testing the co-passenger's PNR that was written on the baggage tag in the hope of getting the address or number by trying different methods such as check-in, editing the booking, updating the contact, but there was no luck.”
But that didn't stop him, since after several failed attempts his developer instinct led him to press the F12 button on his computer and opened the IndiGo developer console on the website where the entire registration flow began.
Upon discovering the information, he took note of the contact details and decided to call the other person to change bags. He explained that fortunately the passenger answered him and he was approximately 7 kilometers away so they could agree on a middle point to see each other.
At the meeting place he explained what had happened and how he found his contact. In addition, he claimed that the other person told him that he had not received any calls from the airline and that he had not realized that the suitcase was not his.
Because it was very easy for him to find personal information on the website, he made some cybersecurity recommendations to the company and advised passengers not to share photos of their boarding pass or details of their booking code on social media or any other sensitive data.
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