Marriott faces London lawsuit over vast data breach

Nithin Chowdary

August 18, 2020

The world's largest hotel operator, LONDON Marriot International Inc, faces a London class action for compromising the personal data of millions of former hotel guests in one of the most massive data breaches in history. In 2014 and 2018, more than 300 million customer records from Marriott's global database, including passport and credit card details, were hacked. And this claim is led by Martin Bryant, the founder of technology and media consultancy Big Revolution. Martin said in his statement," I hope this case will raise awareness of the value of our personal data, result in fair compensation … and also serve notice to other data owners that they must hold our data responsibly".According to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), records of around 7million U.K guests were involved, which last year proposed a 99.2 million pound($133 million) fine over the breach. In 2018, Marriott announced that hackers had accessed its Starwood hotel reservation database, and Chief Executive Arne Sorenson said, "We fell short of what our guests deserved."The London class action has been filed in the High Court after a landmark Court of Appeal decision against Internet giant Google for tracking iPhone users in 2011 and 2012 through third party cookies.

Abridged fromNews 18