GRcade

I'm reading this story on the BBC ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-46401890 ) about 500m peoples data has been breached and I wondered how the strawberry float they had 500m customers?
There's only 7 billion people on Earth so somehow about 8% of the global population have been to these hotels which is bloody staggering considering I bet there's loads of countries where they don't even have a single hotel.

So, am I out of touch and people use hotels way more than I expect?

Is this ResetEra?

Mafro wrote:Is this ResetEra?

I have no idea as I've never logged into the place.
Are we now not allowed to ask random questions in OFF TOPIC .

Only once a week on average, I think that's pretty normal

I don't think i've ever stayed at a Marriott.

500million customers for one of the biggest hotel chains in the world doesn’t sound too ridiculous to me.

Moggy wrote:500million customers for one of the biggest hotel chains in the world doesn’t sound too ridiculous to me.

Here's the hotel chain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriott_International

They have barely any hotels in South America hardly any in most of Africa and 2 in Scandinavia.

500 Million customers my arse .

Just checked the list of Marriott brands, and i've definitely not stayed at any of those.

Over the years i've mainly used chains like Ibis and Novotel.

They could be double counting return customers, so if you were there for 10 separate stays you'd appear 10 times.

Peter Crisp wrote:

Moggy wrote:500million customers for one of the biggest hotel chains in the world doesn’t sound too ridiculous to me.

Here's the hotel chain.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriott_International

They have barely any hotels in South America hardly any in most of Africa and 2 in Scandinavia.

500 Million customers my arse .

Actually according to the system you posted it is not Marriott branded hotels but the subsidiary of Marriott called Starwood (Starwood's hotel brands include W Hotels, Sheraton, Le Méridien and Four Points by Sheraton), Marriott use a different system.

Starwood have over 5,800 properties, that works out as each location having 86,000 customers.

It seems a lot, but you have to remember this is over a number of years (the story says since 2014). The biggest Sheraton hotel is the Sheraton Grand Macao Hotel which has over 4,000 rooms.

If you think about the number of people that book into hotels for work, holidays, overnight stays to be near airports/train stations, dirty weekends with the mistress, etc etc it doesn’t strike me as too ridiculous that over almost half a decade they would have collected the details of 500million customers.

I think I've been in a hotel less than 10 times and I'm not counting staying in Haven in Caister that I was forced to endure as a kid every summer.

Most of those were holidays to Majorca with parents (after they realised Caister was rubbish when I was about 14) and then friends weddings.

Peter Crisp wrote:I think I've been in a hotel less than 10 times and I'm not counting staying in Haven in Caister that I was forced to endure as a kid every summer.

Most of those were holidays to Majorca with parents (after they realised Caister was rubbish when I was about 14) and then friends weddings.

And I can think of a lot of people I work with that travel across the country for their work and stay in hotels almost every week night.

Moggy wrote:Actually according to the system you posted it is not Marriott branded hotels but the subsidiary of Marriott called Starwood (Starwood's hotel brands include W Hotels, Sheraton, Le Méridien and Four Points by Sheraton), Marriott use a different system.

Starwood have over 5,800 properties, that works out as each location having 86,000 customers.

It seems a lot, but you have to remember this is over a number of years (the story says since 2014). The biggest Sheraton hotel is the Sheraton Grand Macao Hotel which has over 4,000 rooms.

If you think about the number of people that book into hotels for work, holidays, overnight stays to be near airports/train stations, dirty weekends with the mistress, etc etc it doesn’t strike me as too ridiculous that over almost half a decade they would have collected the details of 500million customers.

The thing I'm struggling with is that 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day so like strawberry float are they staying in a hotel any time soon and then you've most likely got another 2 billion who also have zero chance of having the spare cash needed.
Also why is everyone staying at this hotel chain there's bloody loads including the last hotel I frequented which I chose simply because it was called "Hotel nice" and was fine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17312819

http://www.hotelnicesorrento.com/

Peter Crisp wrote:The thing I'm struggling with is that 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day so like strawberry float are they staying in a hotel any time soon and then you've most likely got another 2 billion who also have zero chance of having the spare cash needed.

Which leaves you 4 billion people staying in hotels.

Moggy wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:The thing I'm struggling with is that 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day so like strawberry float are they staying in a hotel any time soon and then you've most likely got another 2 billion who also have zero chance of having the spare cash needed.

Which leaves you 4 billion people staying in hotels.

That means 12.5% of the available people on earth have been in a hotel run by these guys. That seems unlikely.

Peter Crisp wrote:and I'm not counting staying in Haven in Caister that I was forced to endure as a kid every summer.

Did you not have fun in the tiger club?

Peter Crisp wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:The thing I'm struggling with is that 1 billion people live on less than $1 a day so like strawberry float are they staying in a hotel any time soon and then you've most likely got another 2 billion who also have zero chance of having the spare cash needed.

Which leaves you 4 billion people staying in hotels.

That means 12.5% of the available people on earth have been in a hotel run by these guys. That seems unlikely.

It’s 500million details, not necessarily 500million individuals.

What’s the alternative explanation? A company gets hacked and is probably in the gooseberry fool for the data breach and so it lies to make the breach even worse?

I could see Trump doing that (“My hotels are HUGE, just tremendous numbers of people, tremendous numbers. They say 500million people? I say it 20 billion people stay just in Trump Tower, it’s a beautiful tower, I am a very good developer”) but I doubt many companies would want to inflate the numbers involved in a data breach.

Vermilion wrote:

Peter Crisp wrote:and I'm not counting staying in Haven in Caister that I was forced to endure as a kid every summer.

Did you not have fun in the tiger club?

One of the better aspects about having such a strawberry floating piss poor memory is that stuff like that has been happily consigned to the dustbin of lost memories. I also can't remember the names or most of the faces of anyone I went to school with so yeah, it's not all great.

At least once a month for me. Do you never go on holiday, Peter?

Theres probably quite a bit of double or triple counting going on, if someone books and doesnt expressly use the same acount they could stay under a business email, a personal email, a mobile phone number, a landline number etc. and each one would be regarded as a different guest. Its also not crazy to think that one of the biggest hotel chains in the world has had 500 million people stay with them.