The international hotel chain Marriott announced on Tuesday that a hacker had accessed personal information of approximately 5.2 million customers who used Marriott Bonvoy, the company’s loyalty app, Reuters reported
It’s the second major data breach for the hotel operator in less than two years and comes at a time when Marriott has been shuttering hotels and laying off workers due to the coronavirus.
The hospitality giant said it believes the information taken may have included names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, e-mails, birthdays, company, gender, loyalty information for linked companies like airlines, room and language preferences. Company is still investigating but it doesn’t believe account passwords or PINs, credit card information, passport information, driver’s license numbers or national IDs information was accessed.
Marriott said it discovered that an unexpected amount of guest information was accessed at the end of February using the login credentials of two employees at one of Marriott’s franchise locations. It believes this activity started in mid-January and the accounts were disabled upon noticed.
Bethesda, a Maryland-based company, has immediately initiated an investigation, carried out enhanced surveillance and worked to notify and assist guests of the latest data breach and to provide the affected guests with free enrolment for up to one year in the personal information monitoring program.
