The largest hotel chain in the world with more than 5,800 properties, Marriott International, disclosed that part of its guest reservation database suffered a large data breach. An internal investigation showed that unauthorised access had been ongoing since 2014.
The company has confirmed that the personal information of up to 500 million guests who made a reservation on or before September 10, 2018 was potentially exposed. Did you stay at a hotel property during that time?
Were you a guest at the Marriott? Beyond name, address, and phone number, the exposed information includes some combination of:
Email address
Passport number
Gender and birth date
Loyalty program account information
Reservation date with arrival and departure information
Additionally, for some of these 327 million guests, encrypted payment card numbers and expiration dates were potentially compromised. They cannot rule out if the ability to de-crypt that information was accessed as well.
Beware of websites offering to check if you were affected by the breach, as it may be a trick to steal your personal information. Norton has many tools to protect you, including the SafeWeb service which helps you safely check a website's reputation.