Hotels hit with credit card fraud scheme

White Lodging, the operator of several hotel franchises such as Marriott, Sheraton and Westin, has confirmed that some of its guests were victims in a recent credit card fraud scheme. The unique pattern occurred in this scheme – cards affected were used at hotel restaurants and gift shops across different states – led experts to suspect that the intrusion likely occurred through emails to employees at a payment processing center. Further, it was suggested that the fraud was made possible in the U.S. because many customer there still use credit cards without the chips or PINs.

This also lead to the issue of remedy. In the article, it was mentioned that while the card issuers were usually the ones absorbing the losses, they were now under pressure to recover the funds. In light of this issue and our upcoming class on data protection, I wonder if the hotels would also be held liable in cases like this, given that their systems are likely the ones that were hacked and compromised.

Original article on the Globe and Mail:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/marriott-hotel-hit-with-massive-credit-card-fraud-scheme/article16661461/