Marriott Says Hackers Stole More Than 5 Million Passport Numbers (cnet.com)

Marriott has downsized its original estimate on a major data breach, but the number of people affected is still historic. The hotel group announced Friday that it now believes hackers accessed the records of up to 383 million guests, following an investigation it conducted with a forensics and analytics team. In November, it had reported an estimate of as many as 500 million guests. From a report: Even at that lower figure, the Marriott incident remains one of the largest personal data breaches in history, more than double that of Equifax, which exposed the personal data of 147.7 million American. Data breaches have become a common issue for massive companies that collect and store information on millions of people. In 2018, tech giants like Facebook and Reddit have fallen victim to data breaches. Hackers look for poor protection that they can bypass to steal valuable details like Social Security numbers, birth dates, email addresses and credit card numbers.

Comments

This could be useful

[gnasher719]

The U.K. government has plans that you need to supply a passport number soon to watch porn. What an opportunity: 5 million passport numbers that you can sell one each to five million privacy-conscious Brits who donâ(TM)t want their porn habits leaked.

Re:Some data should be stored offline

[TechyImmigrant]

My wife's business collects sensitive information - E.G. credit card info for billing customers, but there's quite a bit else. After going through the options, we decided that this stuff would get written in a book. If hackers got in, they wouldn't find much of value to them.

The cost is you have to punch in the numbers into the card machine when fulfilling order. The saving is a reduction in PCI-DSS scam audits to pay for and peace of mind.