Marriott International Inc. announced it suffered a massive data breach, involving the theft of personal information from 500 million hotel guests. The breach lasted 4 years, possibly longer. Stolen information included a 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. For some of the guests, payment information may have also been breached. The Marriott brand includes hotel chains such as Starwood, Westin, Sheraton, W Hotels and more.
Marriott is still investigating the root cause of the breach.
In the meantime, investigators suspect China is behind the data breach.
Marriott offered to pay for new passports for guests experiencing fraud following the data breach.
Read more about it here.