Hotels.com credit-card numbers stolen

"..on a laptop stolen from an Ernst & Young employee."

[walkman]

"Ernst & Young added that the computer was password-protected there was no indication the information had been accessed or misused."
[money.cnn.com...]

these companies need to sued for a lot of money before they use encryptions and other secure methods. Average thief will probably sell it for $200 anyway--unless they see what's in there.

[vincevincevince]

Be interested to know if the CV2's (the security code on the signature strip) were on the database.

As it is illegal to store these I highly doubt it... if they were it would land hotels.com in the ****.

[PeteM]

As it is illegal to store these I highly doubt it... if they were it would land hotels.com in the ****.

Under the Card Scheme Rules, which all merchants are supoosed to abide by, no-one, repeat no-one, is permitted to store the CV2 (the security code on the signature strip). But, that doesn't stop some from doing so.

[SlyOldDog]

Unless it was a targeted theft this laptop will end up getting reformatted and that's it. These kinds of thieves have no time to hack databases on the computers they steal.

It was probably some drug addict anyway. I doubt he reads webmasterworld.

[willybfriendly]

Last laptop I had stolen was immediately put to use by an identity thief. He was also a drug addict. Ultimately was convicted on some 35 counts of identity theft, one per victim.

Here's the kicker, and something few are aware of. He went to prison, where he immediately used "discovery" to demand all of his court records in order to file an appeal. The court records had all of the info he had stolen, which he then began selling to his fellow inmates, who in turn sent it out to the streets where it was used for more ID theft activity.

Wonderful system we have, isn't it.

The above caused my wife and I to lobby the State legislature. In the end, Oregon now has a law that requires that all personally identifying info be redacted from any documents provided to prison or jail inmates.

Where do you live? Are you protected?

WBF

[IanTurner]

Is encryption easy to do on laptops?

Very easy - it slows the disk access down a bit, but with sensitive data you would expect it.

[MichaelBluejay]

Speaking of Hotels.com and security, I was an affiliate for them (I think it was them) a while back and whenever I made a sale, they'd email me a full copy of the order, including the customer's name, full address, where they'd be staying, on what dates, etc. I tried to make them aware repeatedly that this was a problem, but they didn't understand. "We're just sending that to you so you can see what kind of sales activity you're getting." (groan)

To be fair, it could have been another hotel program, I don't rightly remember. But it was still really troubling, especially how I couldn't make them understand why it was an issue.

[simey]

I'm an affiliate for one of their subsidary co's.
They (still) e-mail the customers info.

[pageoneresults]

On a related note, same thing happened to the VA in 2006 May (it slipped by us).

VA Loses Data on 26 Million Veterans
[consumeraffairs.com...]

Since I'm a veteran, I just received snail mail alerting me to the issue this morning.

However, the data did include names, addresses, Social Security Numbers, and some information relating to individuals' disabilities.

Looks like Stolen Laptops are going to be the demise of our personal identities. In addition to everything else going on. ;)

[Rightz]

They must be busy with this because its taken them three weeks to return an email from me interested in sales... they wont be getting my custom!

[wmuser]

These stolen CC stories are continueing again and again,corps arent learning the lesson because they are rarely got sued for it