Governor's Office of Consumer Affairs Urges Consumers to Monitor Financial Accounts in Wake of Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Data Breach

Atlanta, GA – Joe Doyle, Administrator of the Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs, encouraged Georgians and other consumers to monitor their credit statements to ensure their personal information is not compromised as a result of a data breach that impacted Wyndham Hotels & Resorts last year. Wyndham Hotels & Resorts is the latest victim in a data breach that was caught and disabled, but may have affected Georgia residents. Wyndham contacted affected consumers in December and notified them that unauthorized access to Wyndham systems had potentially compromised the personal data on their debit and credit cards. At this time, Wyndham believes no criminal identity theft related to the use of the consumer data has been identified. 

The Governor’s Office of Consumer Affairs encourages consumers to be vigilant and to report any suspicious contacts they receive or activity on their accounts to law enforcement. Affected consumers are encouraged to take the precautionary steps outlined in the Wyndham letter, including obtaining a free fraud alert from one of the credit reporting agencies.

If consumers believe at any time they are victims of identity theft, they should report this to the police and request that the national credit bureaus place a fraud alert on their credit reports. Consumers should also notify banks and creditors involved of questionable charges or accounts, keep records of all telephone calls and follow up in writing with credit bureaus, banks and creditors.

For more information, consumers may visit Wyndham’s website at: http://www.wyndhamworldwide.com/customer_care/data-claim.cfm.

Additional information about protecting yourself from identity theft can be found at http://consumer.ga.gov/00/article/0,2086,5426814_39039081_38690684,00.html

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