In recent times we’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend of big name hotels and retailers being hit with data breaches, where customer information like names, emails, home addresses, phone numbers, and in some cases even credit card information have been hacked and leaked online.Unfortunately this trend does not appear to be slowing down anytime soon because according to a report by Brian Krebs at KrebsOnSecurity, over 1,000 InterContinental Hotels have recently been hit by a data breach where data from cash registers at over 1,000 of their properties have been compromised with malicious software.
In a statement released by the company, “The investigation identified signs of the operation of malware designed to access payment card data from cards used onsite at front desks at certain IHG-branded franchise hotel locations between September 29, 2016 and December 29, 2016. Although there is no evidence of unauthorized access to payment card data after December 29, 2016, confirmation that the malware was eradicated did not occur until the properties were investigated in February and March 2017.”
Now there is a chance that you could have been affected, so the best way is to keep tabs on your credit card statement to ensure that there are no unauthorized charges made to it. The hotel chain has also created an online tool in which customers can check to see if the InterContinental Hotel they were staying at was one of those affected by the breach.