Hacked: What to do if you stayed at Marriott’s Starwood Hotel chain
Take Action to Protect Your Identity
If you have been a guest at any of Marriott’s Starwood properties over the last decade, including its brands of Westin and Sheraton hotels, you will probably want to take action now to protect your identity and credit card information.
Hundreds of millions of patrons learned over the weekend that their personal data, passport numbers and credit card information was stolen from Marriott’s Starwood database.
The unauthorized data breach went on undetected for at least four years, Marriott said in a release on Friday. The hacking started before Marriott took over the Starwood brands in 2016 and continued until it was detected in September. Security experts say this gave the hackers all the time in the world to create bank and credit accounts under hotel patrons’ name.