A compromise of the guest reservation database for Marriott (at its Starwood properties) is under investigation – this may be one of the biggest data breaches with 500 million customers involved. Apparently this happened on or before September 10, 2018 and the company determined this information on November 19, 2018. If you ever made a reservation at one of Marriott hotels in the past, hackers may have access to some (or all) of your data (name, address, phone, passport number, date of birth, gender and possibly payment credit card numbers/expiration dates). Not so surprising is that soon afterwards, the Marriott stock then went down 5.6% in pre-market trading.
According to a Time online article:
“The hack affects some 500 million guests, and for about 327 million of them, the data included passport numbers, emails and mailing addresses, Marriott said. Some credit card details may also have been taken. The Marriott hack may rank only below Yahoo as one of the biggest of personal data, when 3 billion users were exposed to a 2013 security breach. Regulators and consumers have been stepping up their action against companies that have suffered security breaches as such attacks have increasingly become more severe. Target Corp. last year agreed to pay $18.5 million to settle investigations by dozens of states over a 2013 hack of its database in which the personal information of millions of customers was stolen, while Equifax is facing billion-dollar law suits and a regulatory investigation.”
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