Mailing and Contact Lists
March 24, 2011
Members of the Grand Luxxe Residence Club can be easy targets for solicitors. Why? They use mailing lists they purchase from lead generating companies. At some point in time, all of our names may end on these lists. It will happen even though Grupo Vidanta and Vida Vacation Club work very diligently to protect our privacy.Unscrupulous individuals who have access to databases make money by selling lists of names to lead generating companies. One such company representative said in his email to us "I just got in 11k Wyndham leads w/ phones and resort names, purchase dates 4/30/10 to 6/16/10." and "Also I have some new Mexican Myan resort leads for .15 per record second position." Guess what, we can't hide in this electronic world we live in.
We will do our part by posting alerts from fellow members as we receive them (or close to it). One such friend contacted us about 10 days ago with information about an individual posing as a Mayan Resort representative. This person invited him to contact her to participate in a "private & resale program". All under the implied auspices of the Mayan Resorts.
Following is the notice our fellow member received:
Later, our friend asked Vida Vacation Club about the offer and received the following letter in return:
Dear...,
Thank you for contacting us. Please be advised that this company is not related to us in any way. We can assure you that Grupo Mayan has not disclosed any of your information because our security policies strictly enforce our members' privacy; therefore it is beyond our understanding how they got our customer's names. On the other hand, we have concluded that these solicitors have less data than what they claim, due to our security measures to protect our customers' information.
It is important to point out that if for some reason you decide to establish any business relation with them, Grupo Mayan will not be held liable for any misconceptions regarding the outcome.
If any question arises, please feel free to contact us to the numbers listed below.
Kind regards,
Javier Ambrosio
Customer Service Representative/Contact Center USA & Canada: 1-800-843-2335
England: 0-800-096-9367; Mexico: 01-800-366-6600
Rest of the World: +52-33-3880-7831
Mon.-Fri. 7a.m.-8 p.m., Sat. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. CST
www.grandluxxe.com
Today, March 24, 2011, we received an open letter from the Co-Founder and CEO of Trip Advisor. Here is what he had to say:
To our travel community:
This past weekend we discovered that an unauthorized third party had stolen part of TripAdvisor's member email list. We've confirmed the source of the vulnerability and shut it down. We're taking this incident very seriously and are actively pursuing the matter with law enforcement.
How will this affect you? In many cases, it won't. Only a portion of all member email addresses were taken, and all member passwords remain secure. You may receive some unsolicited emails (spam) as a result of this incident.
The reason we are going directly to you with this news is that we think it's the right thing to do. As a TripAdvisor member, I would want to know. Unfortunately, this sort of data theft is becoming more common across many industries, and we take it extremely seriously.
I'd also like to reassure you that TripAdvisor does not collect members' credit card or financial information, and we never sell or rent our member list. We will continue to take all appropriate measures to keep your personal information secure at TripAdvisor. I sincerely apologize for this incident and appreciate your membership in our travel community.
Steve Kaufer
Co-founder and CEO