Barefoot Technologies Blog- Vacation Rental Industry News

Vacation Rental Site TripAdvisor’s Data Stolen

Posted by Adam Zippin on Mar 24, 2011 9:45:00 AM

TripAdvisor’s website has been hacked and an unknown number of member email addresses have been stolen, according to CEO Steve Kaufer.



 



“This past weekend we discovered that an unauthorized third party had stolen part of TripAdvisor’s email list,” Kaufer said in an email to TripAdvisor members. “We’ve confirmed the source of the vulnerability and shut it down. We’re taking this incident very seriously and are actively pursuing the matter with law enforcement.”



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By being a part of the vacation rental industry as a property management software provider, Barefoot would like to make anyone who is a member of TripAdvisor aware of a few things:



 





  • If your email was stolen, you will likely receive spam emails.


  • Spam is usually harmless, but it can also be used to steal personal information via phishing scams. Therefore, avoid opening suspicious emails.


  • Don’t respond to spam, or click any links.


  • Avoid giving personal or financial information away in an email.


  • If you receive an email that looks like it is from TripAdvisor, or any other legitimate company, contact that company to double-check they sent you that email.




 



Exactly how many email addresses were stolen still remains unclear. When asked about it, Kaufer said: “It affected a portion of our membership.” A TripAdvisor spokesman told Consumer Ally that because the incident is under investigation, they have no additional information to share at this time.



 



TripAdvisor does not collect members’ credit card or financial information, and never sells or rents information about its members.



 



If you think your email address was stolen, please let us know as we would love to find out how that has affected your email account.