March 3, 2010

• Hotels Hospitable for Cybercrime, Pt.2
    Birdwalk.

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  By all means, frequent hotels and always use your credit card. (One little nugget here for free: You can even verify this observation yourself. When booking a hotel reservation always check the "best available" category. Most hotels (if not all) talk of "average rates" but, when you put the money down for a room right now, you'll hear the "not available" story and be offered a more expensive substitute. Reasonable, of course. When it comes to the crunch, prices are set by availability. What most people don't realize is that most people gravitate to the "cheaper accommodations" and so the crunch occurs there first. That one remaining room overlooking the dumpster has doubled in price. Now, what you're not told is that the "Oceanview" deluxe room is not caught in the availability crunch and it's rate is much lower then the cheap one is now. Check it out online right now. Call up your favorite hotel's website and look at "best available" for right now and compare "Cityview" (cheap rooms) with "Oceanview" (deluxe) and you'll often find the deluxe to be much cheaper. Then get out your credit card and treat yourself to a night out. With any luck, your credit card will be breached by a hotel hack and you'll get the room free. If not, you've still saved a bunch of money by choosing the deluxe accommodation over the cheaper room and enjoyed the free wine and breakfast in bed.

  Now, where was I? Oh, that's right...hotel cybercrimes 101. Nicholas Percoco, Trustware's online security expert extraordinaire, tells us that the attention to hotel cybercrime "is a new trend". Where was he when I was getting all those calls? Anyway, always remember: Wherever you go...there y'are. Except for the biggies like TJX and Heartland, credit card breaches have a way of avoiding exposure whenever possible. This is the common sense of hotels being gracious toward victims by lowering their bills a little. Everyone forgives (they need to nail those criminals to the wall and stop hiring them, though).

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