Scammers are using social engineering, which is just the fashionable way to say psychology,  and contacting hotels and convincing the hotel IT workers to give access to their computer networks.  Social engineering has been used effectively by cybercrime groups such as Shiny Hunters to gain access to the computer networks of many companies.  Shiny Hunters uses social engineering to gain access to their targeted companies to install ransomware.  The scammers gaining access to hotel computer networks use the access to harvest information about legitimate upcoming hotel reservations of the hotel’s customers.  They then pose as the hotel and contact the customers with requests for payments that may seem legitimate, particularly since the email may not only appear to come from the hotel, but provide details of the actual reservations of their customers.

TIPS

As always, you can never be sure when you get an email, text message or phone call as to who is really contacting you so you should never click on a link, make a payment or provide personal information in response to any communication unless you have absolutely confirmed that it is legitimate.  In response to an email that appears to come from your hotel asking for a payment or credit card information, merely confirm by calling the actual hotel at a telephone number you have confirmed is legitimate.  Don’t call the phone number provided in the email.  Also, as I often advise you, don’t make any payments using your debit card because the protection you get from fraudulent payments is not as good as you get when you pay with your credit card.

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