Marriott Breach – 500 Million Guests’ Data Exposed

Julianne Subia

November 30, 2018

Reading time: 4 minutes

Marriott’s guest reservation system has been breached, exposing the personal information of approximately 500 million guests from over the past four years. DeleteMe can protect you from data breaches like this: we stop hackers from being able to obtain your personal information in the first place. Right now, DeleteMe is offering a free month of protection to those impacted by the Marriott data breach when subscribing to DeleteMe. Sign up for DeleteMe here: https://joindeleteme.com/privacy-protection-plans/

Who is a Victim of the Marriott Breach?

Hackers were able to access Marriott’s Starwood guest reservation database, in turn exposing personal information like names, addresses, contact information, and travel information of guests who made reservations using their system before September 10, 2018. Some of the major Marriott chains impacted by the breach include St. Regis, Westin, Sheraton, and W Hotels. The investigation is still ongoing, but Marriott believes that the hackers have had unauthorized access to the company’s networks since 2014–terrifying. About 500 million people are thought to have been affected. In a statement released early Friday morning, Marriott said, “For approximately 327 million of these guests, the [breached] information includes some combination of name, mailing address, phone number, email address, passport number, Starwood Preferred Guest account information, date of birth, gender, arrival and departure information, reservation date and communication preferences.”

Starwood has had Breaches in the Past

Brian Krebs (@briankrebs), a leading tech. security journalist, was quoted during an interview with BBC (11:12, full interview begins at 10:00), “Almost every major hotel chain out there has been hacked over the last four or five years, and some of them more than once…If you have stayed at a hotel chain in the last four or five years, there’s a very good chance–I don’t care what brand it is–there’s an extremely good chance that one of those chains has lost your information.”

How Identity Thieves use Info from Data Breaches like Marriott

After a data breach like this, it’s not only the hackers who could use your information. They can also sell it to others who are looking to use your personal information for nefarious purposes like stealing your identity, harassment, or stalking. It’s crucial to remove the information that could be floating about you online. This minimizes the chances of cyber criminals (or anyone) being able to find information about you, and steal your identity from the pieces of information that they can find (and buy) about you online. Data broker websites make your personal info public when others search for it, and sell in-depth profiles of you and your family to buyers at prices ranging from $0.99 to $50.

- Credit Line Fraud – Scammers open new credit cards in a victim’s name, impacting chances of receiving future credit

- Tax Return Fraud – Scammers can file for a fake tax return using a name and stolen Social Security Number

- Healthcare Fraud – With increasing costs, medical identity theft is on the rise

- Committing Crimes in your name – When in contact with law enforcement, victims of identity theft can be arrested for crimes they didn’t commit

Social Engineering – Hackers take over social media accounts of friends and family, targeting other individuals to get them to send money or other personal information.

DeleteMe is more Effective than Credit Freezes and Credit Monitoring

DeleteMe works by finding and removing your personal information from these data brokers. By removing this info, DeleteMe stops hackers from easily finding more information about you for identity theft purposes including your:

- Home address/home value

- Age, sex, political affiliation

- Email addresses

- Phone number and mobile phone number

Family members, ages, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses

Credit monitoring and credit freezes simply do not stop many cases of identity theft where hackers use all the information they can buy from data brokers to falsely prove they are you. DeleteMe is offering a free month of protection to those impacted by the Marriott data breach when subscribing to DeleteMe. Sign up for DeleteMe here: https://joindeleteme.com/privacy-protection-plans/

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Julianne Subia

Julianne Subia was DeleteMe’s head opt-out researcher and content marketing specialist from 2018 – 2020. Julianne helped revolutionize the space by publishing some of the first in-depth collections…

Julianne Subia

Hundreds of companies collect and sell your private data online. DeleteMe removes it for you.

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