• The TUGBBS forums are completely free and open to the public and exist as the absolute best place for owners to get help and advice about their timeshares for more than 30 years!

    Join Tens of Thousands of other Owners just like you here to get any and all Timeshare questions answered 24 hours a day!
  • TUG started 31 years ago in October 1993 as a group of regular Timeshare owners just like you!

    Read about our 31st anniversary: Happy 31st Birthday TUG!
  • TUG has a YouTube Channel to produce weekly short informative videos on popular Timeshare topics!

    Free memberships for every 50 subscribers!

    Visit TUG on Youtube!
  • TUG has now saved timeshare owners more than $24,000,000 dollars just by finding us in time to rescind a new Timeshare purchase! A truly incredible milestone!

    Read more here: TUG saves owners more than $24 Million dollars
  • Sign up to get the TUG Newsletter for free!

    Tens of thousands of subscribing owners! A weekly recap of the best Timeshare resort reviews and the most popular topics discussed by owners!
  • Our official "end my sales presentation early" T-shirts are available again! Also come with the option for a free membership extension with purchase to offset the cost!

    All T-shirt options here!
  • A few of the most common links here on the forums for newbies and guests!

Marriott Data Breach

W

winger

TUG Member
Joined
Oct 7, 2006
Messages
3,931
Reaction score
423
Location
Northern California
Well. I had no idea. Anyone else out there aware of this and/or affected by it?
 
Our credit is frozen, so even if someone had our SS#'s, they couldn't really apply for credit.
 
rickandcindy23 said:
Our credit is frozen, so even if someone had our SS#'s, they couldn't really apply for credit.
Click to expand...
Partly, CC companies don't always check credit but being frozen does help.
 
rickandcindy23 said:
Our credit is frozen, so even if someone had our SS#'s, they couldn't really apply for credit.
Click to expand...
I tried to freeze it but didn't have any success. The credit bureau couldn't verify if it was me when I tried to freeze.
 
Fasttr said:
This is just a settlement announcement for old breaches. More detailed info below.

www.ftc.gov

FTC Takes Action Against Marriott and Starwood Over Multiple Data Breaches

The Federal Trade Commission will require Marriott International, Inc.
www.ftc.gov www.ftc.gov
Click to expand...
The part to force Marriott to do more to secure private information is of importance here "will require Marriott International, Inc. and its subsidiary Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide LLC to implement a robust information security program"

I believe Marriott has been C H E A P in the past with their IT spend and hacks is one fall out. The far from stellar website page is another.
 
winger said:
The part to force Marriott to do more to secure private information is of importance here "will require Marriott International, Inc. and its subsidiary Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide LLC to implement a robust information security program"

I believe Marriott has been C H E A P in the past with their IT spend and hacks is one fall out. The far from stellar website page is another.
Click to expand...
Marriott (the hotel company)'s reservations system is so old that I understand that it (still) runs on mainframe computers and is written in COBOL, a language they were still teaching when I was in college 40 years ago, but which I declined to learn because it was old and becoming obsolete even then. That kind of tells you all you need to know. It must be pretty interesting how they even manage to keep those old systems operating.

MVW still chooses to use Marriott's systems for their own reservations. When they bought Vistana, that came with a much more modern reservations system but MVW dumped the new system and moved Vistana to the creaky old Marriott system.

I'm told that Marriott pays big bucks to geriatric COBOL programmers to keep working and not retire as it's very hard to find younger folks who can maintain their software. At some point that strategy is going to stop working. Maybe the edict from the courts will force them to move out of the 1960s.
 
daviator said:
Marriott (the hotel company)'s reservations system is so old that I understand that it (still) runs on mainframe computers and is written in COBOL, a language they were still teaching when I was in college 40 years ago, but which I declined to learn because it was old and becoming obsolete even then. That kind of tells you all you need to know. It must be pretty interesting how they even manage to keep those old systems operating.

MVW still chooses to use Marriott's systems for their own reservations. When they bought Vistana, that came with a much more modern reservations system but MVW dumped the new system and moved Vistana to the creaky old Marriott system.

I'm told that Marriott pays big bucks to geriatric COBOL programmers to keep working and not retire as it's very hard to find younger folks who can maintain their software. At some point that strategy is going to stop working. Maybe the edict from the courts will force them to move out of the 1960s.
Click to expand...
The sad reality is, when Marriott bought Starwood with it came a new modern reservation system. Apparently the security behind it wasn't all that great since it seems the breaches impacted Starwood Hotels and at least one of the breaches was prior to Marriott acquiring Starwood.
 
daviator said:
Marriott (the hotel company)'s reservations system is so old that I understand that it (still) runs on mainframe computers and is written in COBOL, a language they were still teaching when I was in college 40 years ago, but which I declined to learn because it was old and becoming obsolete even then. That kind of tells you all you need to know. It must be pretty interesting how they even manage to keep those old systems operating.

MVW still chooses to use Marriott's systems for their own reservations. When they bought Vistana, that came with a much more modern reservations system but MVW dumped the new system and moved Vistana to the creaky old Marriott system.

I'm told that Marriott pays big bucks to geriatric COBOL programmers to keep working and not retire as it's very hard to find younger folks who can maintain their software. At some point that strategy is going to stop working. Maybe the edict from the courts will force them to move out of the 1960s.
Click to expand...
That's crazy. I would have figured their codebase ran on C# or C++.
 
Reality is, upgrading the system just introduces a whole new host of problems. While is may solve some issues, it isn't like upgrading from mainframe and COBAL is a magic pill that will solve all of their IT woes. Marriott is claiming over 8,000 transactions a second. Amazon probably only does a couple hundred orders every second.
 
Company data breach is like cancer (sorry for going to a dark place), it is not a matter of who, but when. I fault all companies not just Marriott. They do not respect the information we trusted them with if it costs to protect it.

It would surpass my toes and fingers if I was to count the number of Credit Cards, Healthcare Providers, Verizon, banks, Equifax (ironic) a company called Nation Public Data (I believe over 2 billion records) that I have been notified my information was hacked. The companies that have been hacked are so kind to pay for monitoring services for 2 years. The challenge is SS, date of birth, mothers maiden name never changes and much of the other information infrequently changes.

I pay for monitoring my information using Amex credit secure services and a Costco offering that I pay for. I got so many notices of my information on the "Dark Web" that I sometimes feel a flashlight is shining on my information. I froze my credit with all three credit agencies. All reasonable steps. These are reasonable steps to take to try and prevent identity fraud, unless you were a victim of identity fraud. The ease of someone applying for over 50K of credit cards in 48 hours and given bold enough to call the credit card company to change address to get it shipped elsewhere changed that. I added a password protection to my credit cards requiring a password when calling up the credit card company and speaking to someone. 75% of the time they never ask me. I got tied of complaining. I added password protection when speaking to my bank on the phone or doing any face to face at the bank. Lastly, Fidelity has my 401K. Money can only be withdrawn or information changed at a location. I have done neither so I have no clue if it really works.
 
When you can breach DOD, in the Pentagon what website is safe.?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top