Three State Attorneys General Investigating Marriot

Personal information about hundreds of millions of guests was compromised by the data breach at Marriot International, which took place over four years before being detected earlier this month. Hackers accessed gender, birth dates, email and mailing addresses, phone numbers and passport numbers “for a small subset of customers.” The company has agreed to pay for passport replacements if it finds that those customers have been the victims of fraud. Marriott has faced unprecedented criticism about its security practices, and questions about what it was doing to protect its customers. Attorneys General Barbara Underwood of New York, Brian Frosh, Maryland and Josh Shapiro, Pennsylvania, have opened investigations, and many other state officials are using the breach as an example of why stricter consumer privacy regulation is necessary.