Stayed at a BestWestern? Your CC has just been stolen
 

Scotland's Sunday Herald newspaper has an exclusive report that the Best Western hotel chain has lost the personal details of each and every guest who has stayed at any of its 1300 hotels in the past 12 months. This amounts to details on 8 million customers and includes information such as name, address, credit card details and employment details. The data even includes future booking details, causing speculation that homes could be targeted for burglary when it's anticipated they will be unoccupied. A Best Western spokesperson is quoted as saying 'Best Western took immediate action to disable the compromised log-in account in question. We are currently in the process of working with our credit card partners to ensure that all relevant procedural standards are met, and that the interests of our guests are protected.'

Bundled together with home addresses and other personal details, the stolen data can be used by professional organised criminal gangs which specialise in identity theft to apply for loans, cards and credit agreements in the victims' names.

Think I have only stayed at one once and was not in the last year.

i did last week.
i guess i have to get a new card. what else can i do.

Is they cheat?

That frigging blows.

:(

Just wondering from the article, it sounds like this might only affect people who stayed in their European hotels?

Actually after checking further it seems this will be limited to the 1312 hotels in continental Europe.

ya, i guess so. the news broke in scotland which used the word "continental hotels." does that mean mainland europe if spoken from a brit?

Best Western [wikipedia.org] has 4,000 hotels world-wide, 2,000 of which in North America. This means that the 1,312 hotels affected are probably all in continental Europe.

That sucks. Doesn't effect me, though. I haven't stayed at one.

that sucks, fortunately I didn't stay there

Everyone brace yourselves for the 54796976946793487697 fake signups incoming.

Whats the difference between that and staying at the Westin and getting a bunch of food charged to your room