The accommodation reservation website Booking.com has suffered a data breach with “unauthorised parties” gaining access to customers’ details.
The platform said it “noticed some suspicious activity involving unauthorised third parties being able to access some of our guests’ booking information”.
“Upon discovering the activity, we took action to contain the issue,” it said. “We have updated the pin number for these reservations and informed our guests.”
The company, which is headquartered in Amsterdam, lists more than 30m accommodation venues around the world and says it connects “millions of travellers” with experiences, transport and places to stay.
Booking.com declined to say how many people the hack had affected. A spokesperson said that “financial information was not accessed”.
I’ve received a couple of notices. One was for a current booking, another for one from two years ago. They changed the PIN on each. It’s not clear to me how that mitigates the impact of the personal data that was exposed. It’s more like shutting the barn door after the horse has run off.