Important message for those who booked Bristol holiday inn

[sarahthrel]

Hey everyone

if you have booked the Bristol holiday inn parkway before June 10th by debit or credit card, please can you all check your bank statements for any unusual activity from the date you booked from to 10th June.

I've had a email from the police today to state that a number of credit and debit card may have been stolen and used fraudulently by a member of staff. The indivual concerned has been dismissed and arrested and a small amount of personal information was found in his flat. (The people's details which were found have since been contacted)

However it is unknown just how many people are affected by this indivual so if you have found any unusual activity please firstly contact your bank to report the activity then please can you contact me by private message and I will pass you the detectives number so it can be logged.

I have been assured that any personal data held by the hotel is safe and that there is no need to contact them regarding the matter. It has been dealt with and was isolated to one member of staff. No other hotel is affected. 

please remember 

no bank or organisation will ask you for your PIN number over the phone, if you are asked, do not disclose the information.
always flag and note any unusual activity immediately 
If you are unsure about any payment on your account, call your branch to get more information on the payment and if you still don't regonise it, report it. 

Any questions, please ask

sarahthrel

[Carrehz]

eeeeep!! Good thing I hadn't gotten round to booking the hotel yet >_< Thanks so much for the heads up!! I hope no one on here got their info stolen

[mlplaura]

I'm sorry, but, why isn't this in a far more prominent place than just in the travel and accommodation section which has no other posts other than this one?? I'm pretty sure the majority of PonyCon attendees would be booked into this hotel (myself included) and would REALLY want to know about this, even if it didn't affect them in the way that their details were stolen.

It's not on any of your social media outlets that this has come to light and may be a potential problem for attendees. I mean, so far as of me typing this, only 30 odd people have looked at the topic. There's got to be WAY more than 30 attendees staying at this hotel what with it being one of the closest ones to the con. Also, it seems like the majority of attendees to PC are no longer registered with the forum and are predominantly on facebook and other social media platforms, so they wouldn't see this at all.

I REALLY hope no PC attendees details were stolen, or anyone elses for that matter.

[Sprintex]

Bit harsh I think?

The hotel is in no way connected to PonyCon itself, if you choose to stay there that's your business, so I don't see that there's any responsibility on the part of the Committee or indeed the forum Admin to alert people. That is up to the hotel management.


Paul

[mlplaura]

Not particularly. If ponycon have been passed information by the police, surely that information should be appropriately passed on on all channels?

Yes, people have chosen to stay here, but we didn't choose to potentially get our information stolen. Just a heads up on multiple channels would be nice so as many people who may potebtially be affected can be aware of the situation.

[waterfire]

Agreed. Guys, I know most people follow the Facebook or Twitter channels. This really needs to be posted on them.

[daisyd]

PonyCon itself wasn't passed the info by the police. sarahthrel was contacted personally by the police as hers was one of the cards that may have been compromised. As she is committee, she kindly posted to pass the info on here. My partner has booked in the same hotel (as have a whole lot of us I suspect!) and he hasn't been contacted.

I'll repost the original info in a more public area of the board in a minute, and on social channels. My apologies for missing this, I've been up to my eyes in many-a-thing recently

[JollyOldCinema]

Who in their right mind would do something like this?! You've gotta be a bit of an idiot to
exploit a family convention to steal information from a hotel to cause problems!

Hopefully anyone affected gets anything stolen back

[Magick]

Just got my latest credit card bill today and thankfully I am unaffected by it. A hacked cc is the last thing I would have needed before my holiday!

[Loganberry]

A small but useful way we can all help is to get the word out. If you use Twitter or Facebook, draw attention to the official posts with a post on your own account. If you have an MLP-related blog or website, put a message on there. And so on. Also, some people won't be looking at the internet today, maybe because of work or college or family or whatever -- so it's worth posting a reminder on your Twitter (or whatever) in a couple of days' time too.

Thank you to daisyd for posting about this over on UK of Equestria, and I'll give that a bit more promotion over there as well as putting up a post on my own blog. I'm not personally staying in that hotel (Premier Inn for me) but I know quite a few who are, and I hope everyone who may have been affected finds out quickly for their own peace of mind. It is at least a relief that the culprit has been caught and is now in the hands of the police.

[daisyd]

Jun 22, 2017 12:24:20 GMT JollyOldCinema said:

Who in their right mind would do something like this?! You've gotta be a bit of an idiot to
exploit a family convention to steal information from a hotel to cause problems!

I doubt it was anything personal against PonyCon. Just a chancer being sneaky and getting caught. If not for one of us being one of the ones who was targetted, chances are we might not even have heard anything.

Plus for all we know, this could have been going on before and it was just that they got caught this time.

[Gaspodé]

How awful hope no one is affected x

[sarahthrel]

Thanks guys, yes daisy was right a few weeks ago my card details were stolen. At the time I made no connection to the hotel and thought I'd been careless and left my details about (kinda unusual for me) however I was contacted by the defective on Saturday night to say that mine and 2 other people staying in the hotel personal emails and conversations were found during a raid of the flat of a former employee.

Mine was quite significant as the police found my card details in that flat. They contacted me to see if my card has been used fraudulently. When they found out it had, they had enough evidence to charge the employee of the theft of the details.

The detective and I are both in agreement that others may have been targeted by this person. I don't think for one moment that the employee targeted specific ponycon attendees but just happened to be unlucky enough to target one seriously over cautious member of the committee (namely me) it might just be the 3 people, it might be more but we simply don't know. Like I said there is no cause to worry, if your bank account has been unaffected by now, you have nothing to worry about.

My concern was that others may have suffered the same fate as I have and as with any person, you want to see the thief actually get caught and banged to rights so that's why I warned people, not to be super cautious about booking or cause upset but to give the affected people answers.

I have to say though when this happened, my bank was brilliant. They stopped my card straight away and sent me a replacement, they also blocked the users iPad and iPhone from making any other transactions and the money taken from my account was back in my account within 6 hours. I was only mildly inconvenienced by the whole matter as I had to wait 72 hours for my new card to arrive.

And as for the thief, for the sake of the 3 lots of pizzas he ordered using my details, I've been assured he hasn't a leg to stand on in court and most likely be enjoying prison food for a little while.

[Archer]

So sorry that happened to you sarahthrel. That really does suck I'm glad that attendees have been made aware though so they can just double check their statements just in case there's an odd item or two on there