Cybercrime has become a scourge with increasingly complex and expert methods, affecting all business sectors, including travel. From targeted attacks in Italy to data collection decrees in Spain, to multiple incidents at airline giants, it's clear that travelers need to take the protection and use of their personal information very seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
L'Agency for Digital Italy (AgID)<\/strong> and the postal police recently dismantled the \"Mydocs\" hacker gang, which specialized in reselling personal data on the dark web. These cybercriminals targeted at least four Italian hotels, managing to steal around 90,000 host identities<\/strong> who had provided their documents at the time of registration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The target structures, all four-star establishments, include the hotel Ca' dei Conti<\/strong> in Venice (38,000 images stolen), the Casa Dorita<\/strong> in Milano Marittima (2,300 documents), the Regina Isabella<\/strong> in Ischia (30,000), and theHotel Continental <\/strong>Trieste (17,000).<\/p>\n\n\n\n The stolen data includes photographs contained in identity cards and passports, as well as other documents such as driving licenses, which are sold for between 800 and 10,000 euros. This information is frequently used to commit identity theft<\/strong>These documents enable fraudsters to open bank accounts, apply for loans and collect the associated sums. A peak in the number of incidents was observed between August 9 and 11, with documents offered for sale on the dark side of the web.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These attacks in Italy are not isolated cases; cybercrime is on the rise everywhere. The travel sector is particularly vulnerable to cyber attacks, and has been the scene of a number of major incidents:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Artificial intelligence (AI) is also under fire, as it increases the range of possibilities for hackers. Visit risk of phishing attacks has exploded with AI<\/strong>fraudulent e-mails are better written and quickly translated. Booking.com, which uses AI to identify attacks, was able to block 60 million e-mails with fraudulent links in just one month. In addition mirror sites<\/strong> fraudulent museum and theme park websites are created by cybercriminals to sell imaginary tickets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Alongside the risks of theft, Spain has introduced a new challenge for the protection of travelers' data. Since last December, a royal decree (933\/2021)<\/a> obliges tourist accommodations, travel agencies and car rental companies to collect and transmit to the authorities massive amounts of data<\/strong> on their foreign customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What travellers need to know:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Spanish tourism professionals, such as Ram\u00f3n Estalella of the Spanish Confederation of Hotels and Tourist Accommodation (CEHAT), are denouncing this measure as a \"step in the right direction\". \"completely illegal and disproportionate\".<\/strong> and call the decree \"Big Brother<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n ECTAA (European Association of Travel Agents and Tour Operators) warns against the scope of the data requested, calling it excessive and potentially contrary to European data protection rules (RGPD)<\/strong>CEHAT believes that this massive collection exposes visitors to potential risks of misuse of their information in the event of cyber-attacks. CEHAT has also launched a legal action against the Spanish State<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Spanish government, through the Secretary of State for Security, Rafael Perez Ruiz, is defending the decree, claiming that it is necessary for the fighting terrorism and organized crime<\/strong>citing the arrest of 18,000 people in a voluntary trial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the face of these omnipresent threats, whether data theft or excessive data collection, travelers need to be extra vigilant. The Agency for Digital Italy (AgID) stresses the importance of the fundamental role of citizens in protecting their identity<\/strong>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cybercrime has become a scourge with increasingly complex and expert methods, affecting all business sectors, including travel. From targeted attacks in Italy, to data collection decrees in Spain, to multiple incidents at airline giants, it's clear that cybercriminals ... Read the article<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7021165,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_sitemap_exclude":false,"_sitemap_priority":"","_sitemap_frequency":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7021164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7021164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7021164"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7021164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7021166,"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7021164\/revisions\/7021166"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7021165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7021164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7021164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visamundi.co\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7021164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A global threat to the travel industry<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Spain and the \"Big Brother of Tourism\": Controversial data collection<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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