Frequent flyer miles are usually earned from a Frequent Flyer Program (FFP), a loyalty scheme offered by airlines. The points are accrued by travelling with the airline, the more you travel, and the greater the distance, the more points you accumulate.

This is normally how it works, but different airlines may off alternative ways to earn points, such as shopping at certain outlets or staying in certain partnership hotels. These points can then be exchanged for air fare, seating class upgrades or access to luxury airport lounges.

Researchers at a company called CompariTech have trawled the Dark Web and come up with some interesting finds. You can buy air miles for Delta flights or British Airways, that have been hacked from compromised accounts. $124 will get you 100,000 British Airways air miles, $884 will get you 100,000 air miles with Emirates Skywards, or the same price you can get 45,000 Delta sky miles. This makes buying air miles illegally considerably cheaper than earning them.

The process of obtaining the miles usually works like this; a hacker will hack in to an air miles account and transfer the air miles into a different account, “gifting” them to the secondary account. They can then either sell this account or transfer the air miles from this account to an account of your choosing. The air miles are sold in two categories, either “clean” or “tainted”.

Clean meaning that you will likely have no trouble using them because there’s no evidence the original account holder knows they have been hacked, assumedly because people aren’t keeping track of their air miles like they are their bank account. Tainted accounts allow you to purchase air miles for much cheaper, but there’s a risk you won’t be able to use them since they may have been blocked.

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