Users of the popular robo-advisor Betterment were left confused and concerned this weekend when the official financial app pushed out a disturbing notification. The message, which looked like a classic phishing attempt, urged recipients to send $10,000 to Bitcoin and Ethereum wallets with the dubious promise that the company would “triple your crypto.”
The alert, which read “Bryan: Betterment is giving back!,” claimed to be a celebration of the company’s best-performing year. Screenshots shared on Reddit confirmed that the push notification—and in some cases, emails—was indeed sent through Betterment’s official systems.
In response to the viral thread, Betterment confirmed via X (formerly Twitter) that the message was the result of a compromise. They clarified that it was an “unauthorized message” sent via a “third-party system” used for communications.
While the incident appears to be a breach of a marketing tool rather than the core banking platform, it serves as a stark reminder of the vulnerabilities in third-party integrations. Betterment has not yet disclosed how many users were affected.
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