Beware of fake bookings, phishing and cancellation traps on online portals

Money and data are at stake when cybercriminals shamelessly attack booking portal extranets.

Online bookings are on the rise and with them online pirates looking for (account) data and quick money. A worthwhile gateway for them are online portals with the data of hundreds of millions of users. "You have to be careful," warns Markus Gratzer, Secretary General of the Austrian Hoteliers' Association, about the current scams:

Fake bookings, empty hotel rooms and waves of cancellations

According to media reports, hackers in Germany have cracked Booking.com accounts and booked dozens of hotel rooms on behalf of unsuspecting users. They stood empty, with the cancellation demands resulting in stress for guests and losses for the hotels. What would have helped: booking via the hotel website: "That's where hotels post the best offers," says Gratzer.

The phishing trap

When perpetrators use security gaps to hijack the platform’s extranet, they pretend to be a hotel and ask guests to enter their credit card details again via a supposedly secure channel – and the money is gone. Booking directly would also have helped here, says Gratzer: “Platforms can be great tools if they do their homework. Don't play with data security. There is still a lot to do!”