About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Marriott Got Bonvoyed by the EU: $123 Million Fine Does Nothing to Protect Meaningful Data

bonvoy
Jul 09 2019

Marriott hasn’t talked about the really valuable data that’s been breached, preferring to focus on expired credit cards and passports. The EU proposes to fine Marriott for a criminal hack of their systems, which is how the law works, but it’s not clearly the best way to drive collaboration between large companies and government agencies protecting against nation state attacks.

And indeed it’s government agencies that are the biggest violators of data privacy.

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American Airlines Passenger Told to Wear a Blanket or Else She Couldn’t Fly

african american family
Jul 08 2019

This isn’t an incident of too sexy to fly as we sometimes see but more of flight attendants not feeling resort wear departing a resort destination – for Miami of all places – is appropriate in the skies.

And in a post-9/11 world passengers have to strictly follow instructions, reasonable or not, or else they won’t be able to travel … at best.

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The British Airways Data Breach Fine is a Huge Injustice, Where’s Your Piece of the Money?

plane tails
Jul 08 2019

British Airways is facing a proposed $230 million fine under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for a hack last summer compromised personal information on approximately 500,000 customers accessing its website.

This proposed fine is more than 3 times the total fines meted out during GDPR’s first year. In the year after GDPR’s passage there were 200,000 investigations, 64,000 of which found fault, resulting in total fines of approximately $70 million — nearly 90% of which was from a single case against Google.

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