Texas Border Business
AUSTIN – Attorney General Ken Paxton today announced that his office served an investigative subpoena – also known as a Civil Investigative Demand – on Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain. Marriott, which operates nearly 7,000 properties, revealed that its Starwood reservation system was hacked, potentially compromising the personal information of up to 500 million guests.
“The Marriott data breach has the potential of leaving hundreds of thousands of Texans vulnerable to the nightmare of identity theft,” Attorney General Paxton said. “My office is taking immediate action to seek documents and other information from Marriott to examine the nature and extent of this data breach, including how and why this massive hack occurred.”
Marriott disclosed that the unauthorized access started in 2014 and may affect those who made reservations from that time until September 10, 2018. Hackers obtained a wealth of personal information on the hotel’s guests – including potentially names, addresses, dates of birth, passport numbers, email addresses and phone numbers, as well as certain travel information such as reservation dates. They also may have obtained encrypted credit card information for some guests. At this time, Marriott is unable to rule out the possibility that the hackers obtained the components necessary to decrypt the credit card information.
Marriott established a special website where concerned customers can get more information on the data breach. It is also operating a call help center at 877-273-9481.
Texans who believe they are victims of the Marriott data breach may file a complaint online with the attorney general’s office at https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/cpd/file-a-consumer-complaint. For general information on how to protect your credit and personal information, visit the Fighting Identity Theft page of the attorney general’s website at https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/identitytheft.
