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Watch out for this scam...

Posted by (USA) on

You receive some type of communication (in my case a message on 'WhatsApp") from a hotel you have reserved informing you that your reservation was flagged as "suspicious" and that you need to make a further payment through some link to "keep your booking active" or it would be cancelled.

To my eyes this had scam written all over it, and apparently even though I've discovered it's commonly known I'd never heard of it before.

They had my dates of stay correct and I booked directly with the hotel so looks like the hotel system was hacked.

Posted by
10213 posts

Thanks for posting, Joe. The more people who know about this the better.

Always contact the hotel directly if you receive a “What’s App” message. Don’t reply through what’s app.

Posted by
6104 posts

Interesting that you had this happen with hotels you booked direct! I have had at least 2 (maybe more) of those messages for hotels booked on Booking. So I was blaming a leak in their system, which we know happened.

Posted by
168 posts

On further thought I suppose there is some reservation software service that many different hotels subscribe to so assuming that is true the breach is not specifically related to that particular hotel.

Posted by
288 posts

I received one of those messages for a hotel that I booked in Budapest. I was suspicious because the country code for the number was +55, Brazil. I contacted the hotel and they said that their Booking.com account was compromised. I booked through the hotel website but they use booking.com to manage their reservations.

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