Ahh, but the Russians. That's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic and calculus ... that the Russians hacked American Express.
Posted on 03/21/2018 12:43:58 PM PDT by tarpit
FYI. Received this email from American Express.
We are writing to let you know that American Express recently learned that our third-party vendor, Orbitz, was the victim of a cyber attack. The attack occurred on an Orbitz platform that serves as the underlying booking engine for Amextravel.com, and for travel arrangements made by calling an Amex Travel Representative. It was not an attack on, and did not compromise, the platforms American Express uses to manage your American Express® Card accounts.
We are still working with Orbitz to get additional information, but we wanted to alert you as soon as possible. We understand that transactions made using the Orbitz platform between January 1, 2016 and December 22, 2017 may have been affected. Orbitz has assured us that its platform has since been remediated.
The information that may have been accessible to the attacker was your full name, payment card data, date of birth, email, phone number, physical and/or billing address and gender. Orbitz has advised us that there is no evidence that other types of personal information, such as Social Security numbers, passport information, or travel itineraries, were impacted.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanexpress.com ...
And.......................it’s the Russians. Right?
But they finally did shut that barn door...
1. Nothing at the link for anyone who is not an American Express card holder.
2. The larger general question is if the hack of Orbitz applied to all of Orbitz, and not just Orbitz business with AmEx, and if so the potential compromise exists for anyone who has been booking with Orbitz; not just AmEx card holders.
Ahh, but the Russians. That's... that's where I had them. They laughed at me and made jokes but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt and with... geometric logic and calculus ... that the Russians hacked American Express.
CA DMV is not accepting amex at this time - nobody noes nothin - amex or CA dmv.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/online/vrir/vr_top2
well, this certainly explains why i received an email saying a new Orbitz account had been opened with my email address, even though that email had been associated with a very old Orbitz account I hadn’t used in nearly two decades.
I immediately used their password recovery features to re-enter the account and found “Doug Johnson” had tried to take control. Calling Orbitz was next to useless. Their foreign workers were pretty clueless in general and clearly clueless about a system-wide hack. they claimed I had no account with them before the hack, etc. At any rate, I did get them to shut the account down, plus, given their HORRIBLE customer service, I’ll never deal with them again.
A similar thing happened with my Netflix account (which I DO use) a couple of weeks before the Orbitz one, which got me mildly paranoid that there might be malware on my laptop, but given my precautions and scans that seemed unlikely.
I suspect the Netflix hackers used the data from the Orbitz hack to get into my Netflix account.
At least smart companies send out emails when the primary parameters of an account are modified.
BTW, a lesson learned earlier: never, ever leave a credit card on record if at all possible. I had a newegg account hacked a few years ago and the hackers bought a (supposed) non-refundable gift card with the CC on record. I then removed all the on-file CCs I could from that and all other accounts.
Another lesson: whenever possible, especially with financial accounts, do not use obvious personal information for the login ids and always use a different password for every account, no matter what. I now use long, difficult passwords, but use a program called Roboform to keep track of all of them.
see my post further down: based on my experience with a recent Orbitz hack and the fact that I’ve never had an Amex card in my life, the whole Orbitz DB was taken and it has nothing to do with Amex per se. Too bad the pricks at Orbitz haven’t notified their customers about this.
Thanks. I have an Orbitz acct but Orbitz has not been my air travel search agent through which I have made any of my trips with for some time - found deals with others. The card on my Orbitz acct may now be an old, deactivated c-card.
“The card on my Orbitz acct may now be an old, deactivated c-card.”
i’m sure that was the case with my card as well, given that my cards have all been hacked and deactivated for many card generations since then.
BTW, I believe ALL of the hacks occurred when using the cards in person, and NOT online. I now use only cash for almost all B&W transactions, except for maybe something like a carwash.
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