Hyatt’s Data Breach Plus 31 Days of Giveaways – Day 26

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Late last month I wrote about a data breach that affected some Starwood point of sale systems. Data breaches are nothing new, but Starwood released a list of properties where the breaches occurred which I appreciated and found interesting.

Just recently, Hyatt released their own statement about their own data breach, which they disclosed as being infected with malware found on their payment processing system that was designed to steal credit card details. an investigation has been launched and Hyatt is providing customers with updates at: www.hyatt.com/protectingourcustomers/.

Although Hyatt is not releasing a list of which hotels were affected like Starwood did, Hyatt is recommending that people check their payment account card statements.

This is sound advice for all accounts and card statements. Especially during the holidays, it is easy to overlook or dismiss a charge or two, thinking that they were probably just extra gifts purchased perhaps by a secondary authorized cardholder. The breach is a good reminder for all of us to be diligent in checking our records though, to make sure we aren’t getting charged for something we didn’t purchase. If reported right away, most credit cards have excellent protection measures in place to remove fraudulent charges.

To enter Magic of Miles’ contest today for a swag bag
, leave a comment on this post about data breaches. Have you been personally affected before whether Hyatt, Starwood, Target, or another company? What do you make of all the issues that hospitality firms have been having lately?

The contest ends tonight at 9pm PST, and for full contest rules you can click here.

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38 Comments

  1. My bank reissued my debit card as a failsafe for the Target breach. Not sure if related but recently have been having more fraud on my cards. Third card to be reissued in last two months. Must be all the holiday shopping…

  2. I’ve received notices (or read about) several data breaches/thefts in several of the companies I’ve previously dealt with. Fortunately, I’ve never been affected negatively by any of these incidents.

  3. No breach, personally. Some fraud can be undone if businesses put the effort in. Someone bought airplane tickets to Italy on my mom’s card. All airline ticket purchases require information such as name, date of birth, etc. Also, the person flying on the stolen ticket shows up at the gate! The charge was reversed. I would have liked to know that some punishment came to the perpetrator, but I don’t think anything happened.

  4. Besides credit cards, also good to keep an eye on other “currencies.” I got hit by the BA breach and my account zeroed out. And just last month my Hyatt gift card balances were hacked and used.

  5. My Amex Platinum got hit in the Target breach with numerous bogus charges. Sadly I was on a job out of state and I really needed that card! Shortly thereafter I was hit by a department store breach where I’d recently purchased shoes. 2014 I had five cards compromised. This year, my AA citi card was hit last week. I check my charges diligently. Tis the season to steal other people’s stuff.

  6. Notified by Target, Home Depot, Anthem Blue Cross, and sundry others. No sign of fraudulent activity from those, but 3 years ago my SS # was obtained (perhaps from medical records) and used to open a cellphone account and buy 4 iPhones. No stolen credit card, but this is actually more problematic because the fraud alerts I now have in place mean I never get automatic approval when applying for credit.

  7. I hadn’t shopped at Target in YEARS and the one time I go happens to the be timeframe of the breach…..SMDH! And last week suspicious chargers on my AMEX. Thank goodness for AMEX fraud protection. They replaced the card immediately.

  8. i had a couple thousand in charges forced thru without authorizations on a blocked card, good stuff. still not sure what breach allowed that one.

  9. never been breached. hope never stays as never. but if not, a little time invested will get you back rolling with no major issues.

  10. It seems like at least once a month I get a letter from a company letting me know that my data has been breached, offering me a free two-year subscription to lifelock. Too bad those aren’t stackable; I’d be protected through the next century!

  11. It seems like at least once a month I get a letter from a company letting me know that my data has been breached, offering me a free two-year subscription to lifelock. Too bad those aren’t stackable; I’d be protected through the next century!

  12. We have not been affected by those data breaches, but have had our credit card numbers used a couple of different times. We check our accounts regularly and catch the charges right away.

  13. I’ve got credit cards with all three chains and so far my luck has held. Can’t believe how lax they are with this information!

  14. Got skimmed at a restaurant a few years back. Found charges for a resort stay only a couple of mines from the restaurant. It was very easy for the police to get him since it was all local. Convincing the CC company was a little different story but it all came good in the end.

  15. Our cards were replaced after the Target breech and I’ve had a couple that were replaced after misuse, but I attribute those to probable retail / restaurant employee skimming / theft

  16. I am guessing I’m affected by the data hack although I’m still mad at how it was communicated to us … Or rather not communicated.

    Fortunately, I’m also part of the OPM data breach by the government so I just started to get my stuff monitored. Seems like we need identity monitoring for all Americans.

  17. I suppose I’m going to be one of the affected Hyatt customers this year, but I’ll be watching my statements carefully.

    Question: Wasn’t there legislation (Dodd-Frank? Sorbanes-Oxley) that required corporations to audit and secure their IT systems or face penalties? I remember my SVP running around for a while about 10 years ago and having to personally vouch on paper for the integrity verification.

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