Add Category
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike offered $US10 UberEats gift cards to teammates and partners who aided in the IT outage.
The vouchers were ineligible after Uber flagged them as potential fraud because of high usage rates, CrowdStrike confirmed.
An estimated 8.5 million computers were disabled during the worldwide outage.
Virtual gift cards offered by Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike to those who aided customers through the global IT outage have been blocked and flagged for potential fraud by Uber.
The recent global IT outage — which saw an estimated 8.5 million computers disabled and brought much of the world to a standstill — was caused by a single update to CrowdStrike software that runs on Microsoft Windows.
A CrowdStrike spokesperson confirmed to the ABC the company sent the $US10 ($15) vouchers to "teammates and partners" who had helped customers in the aftermath of the outage.
Tech news website TechCrunch reported that recipients received an error message when trying to activate the voucher, stating it had "been cancelled by the issuing party and is no longer valid".
CrowdStrike confirmed that Uber had blocked the gift cards and flagged them as fraud due to high usage rates.
"CrowdStrike did not send gift cards to customers or clients," the spokesperson said.
"We did send these to our teammates and partners who have been helping customers through this situation.
"Uber flagged it as a fraud because of high usage rates."
Partners of the company sell and manage CrowdStrike for customers, the spokesperson said.
The ABC has reached out to Uber for comment but is yet to hear back.
TechCrunch first reported an email from CrowdStrike offering the gift card due to "the additional work that the July 19 incident has caused".
"And for that, we send our heartfelt thanks and apologies for the inconvenience," the email read.
Users on social media spoke of the outrage of the situation, labelling it as an "insult".
"I hoped it was a bad joke," one user wrote on the platform X.
"$10 is the perfect amount to not quite have enough for an order," another posted on Reddit.
For much of the world, chaos ensued after a CrowdStrike cyber security update knocked out millions of workstations running Microsoft Windows, with social media abuzz with reports of "blue screens of death" .
Banks, air travel, hospitals, supermarkets and thousands of other organisations grounded to a halt — exposing the underlying fragility of digital networks.
The financial impact on Australian businesses alone is tipped to surpass $1 billion, according to business leaders.
ABC