Hotels.com Stolen laptop containing credit card numbers

[gizmo]

Thousands of Hotels.com customers may be at risk for identity theft after a laptop computer containing their credit card information was stolen from an auditor, a company spokesman said Saturday.

 

For the rest of the story:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,198078,00.html

[Krazy Kruizers]

Heard about this morning. That happened in Feb and they are just now contacting people and letting them know.

 

Have never used them. We always book our own hotels.

[arzz]

Having been the victim of two credit card thefts this year -- it never ceases to amaze me how long it takes for the companies who mishandle our credit card information to publicly "fess up". I do not know if the waiting period involves some sort of law enforcement work to try to bait and catch the thieves, or if it is just reluctance on the parts of large corporations to admit their own personal liability.

 

Though I do use one credit card on line, I do not believe that was how our credit was stolen. Both times we were called (incredibly quickly - within an hour or two of its misuse) by the credit card company and asked if we had legitimately made the charges in question. Either they use some sort of psychic fraud detection systems, or, as I believe, both times they already knew that our credit card number was with a group of compromised card numbers and they were watching. Amazingly, a couple of weeks following each episode there was a public announcement by the credit card company that huge numbers of their card numbers were stolen.

 

What I do not understand, is once they know that the numbers are compromised, why do they not immediately issue new cards with new numbers -- why do they wait for the fraud to occur? In both cases we were personally liable for nothing but had to wait through the awkward days while new cards were issued and sent to us. If that happened during a time that we were traveling it would not only be extremely awkward, but it may be days or weeks before we could know of the fraud and stop the card. We might then be stuck with bills that we would have to pay. We never travel with only one credit card.

[bepsf]

Good grief--

 

Am I the only one that believes that personal information including SSN's and CC numbers have no place on a laptop computer out of the office???

[RuthC]

Good grief--

 

Am I the only one that believes that personal information including SSN's and CC numbers have no place on a laptop computer out of the office???

That isn't safe, either, Brian. Yesterday's newspaper here had an article about a laptop with such sensitive information stolen from a YMCA office.

I don't know what the solution is in today's world. I don't like seeing this kind of info stored in something as portable as a laptop, however.

 

We have a lot of bright people on this board. Any ideas?

[Tricia724]

What I like about this story is that the computer was stolen in late February and Ernst & Young did not report it until May 3. They were really concerned about customers, weren't they? Sounds like they just sat around and waited to see whether anyone reported a problem in the hopes that they wouldn't have to admit to their own mistakes. Nothing like giving crooks a two month head start on us.

 

Makes you wonder how many times our accounts are compromised and nobody reports it.

[NorthernNeighbour]

Good grief--

 

Am I the only one that believes that personal information including SSN's and CC numbers have no place on a laptop computer out of the office???

 

My view is that a laptop computer is little different than my wife's handbag in size and weight. Either one could be stolen, so we need to be careful to always keep them in our possession.

 

Difficult to see how keeping credit cards and social security numbers on a computer is any different than keeping records of these numbers (not to mention the cards themselves) in a handbag.

 

One trick I have learned is when I record my cc numbers and/or ssn on my computer list, I scramble the numbers in a sequence which I remember only in my head. Not impossible for a thief to decifer them, but somewhat more difficult.

[xpcdoojk]

In my palm pilot or laptop, I always use an eleven digit code phrase and replace each number with a letter and the 11th character means to repeat the number in front of it... IE 11 might be mk and not mm... this way I don't worry about important numbers in my personal computer. As far as corporations and the like, I think it is probably a good thing that they don't put out a news release immediately as the person stealing the laptop probably doesn't know what they actually have and just hock it at a pawnshop or something for enough money to get high. I would think that companies need to makesure that any information on laptops with customer information needs to at least password protect it. We can all only hope and pray that this information doesn't get used.

 

I have booked with Hotels.com but not for a couple of years. I imagine my CC information is out of date.

 

jc

[bruceh4]

My laptop has a built in finger print reader. When I turn it on the first thing it wants is to see my finger print. Unless the thief or anybody else has a finger print exactly like mine, they cannot get into the machine:eek: