Silversea Cruises (UK Limited) is a luxury cruise provider. In April 2022, the company wrote to customers to inform them that their data had been breached. Here’s what we know about the Silversea data breach so far.
It took around eight months to warn customers that their data could be in the hands of cybercriminals
The data breach occurred in August 2021 after a third-party gained unauthorised access to a number of the company’s systems. Some personal data may have been accessed in this breach. This data may include, but isn’t limited to:
- Dates of Birth
- Gender
- Nationality
- Contact information
- Passport numbers
- Driving licence numbers
- Financial account numbers
- Usernames and/or passwords for online accounts
- Scans of official documents
- Data about the health of some Silversea Cruises passengers.
We don’t yet know how many customers were affected by the breach. However, Silversea boasts a fleet of 11 ships, which range in size from 51 to 364 suites, so thousands of people could be involved.
Worryingly, while the breach happened in August last year, it took around eight months to warn customers that their data could be in the hands of cybercriminals.
Information stolen in breaches is often used to commit cybercrime. Similar data breaches have resulted in fraud, blackmail, and identity theft, so Silversea customers are at high risk of being targeted by cybercriminals. The delay in notifying affected travellers means that they were not given the chance to secure their personal data quickly following the security incident. As such, everyone involved has been left vulnerable to cyber fraud and scams for months.
Furthermore, while Silversea Cruises has said that it is not aware of any attempt to exploit the stolen information, it simply cannot guarantee the safety of the compromised data. The dark web is commonly used by cybercriminals to buy and sell stolen information, which is later used to commit crimes. Often, data accessed in cyberattacks takes months to be used. So even if it hasn’t yet been exploited for nefarious purposes, this does not mean that it won’t be.
Our data protection experts have been contacted by a number of UK based Silversea customers worried about the theft of their data. Many of whom are experiencing significant levels of distress.
If Silversea Cruises has contacted you to warn you that your data was exposed in this attack, contact us to find out how we can help. We offer no-win, no-fee funding arrangements for all our data breach compensation group action claims.
