I got hit by the same Booking.com WhatsApp scam recently and this post really nails how bad the situation has gotten. The scary part is how accurate the data is. Full name, exact dates, booking reference. That doesn’t feel like random spam at all.
Booking keeps brushing this off as a hotel problem, but when scammers clearly have access to booking level data, something in their ecosystem is leaking. And this has been happening to tons of people for months now.
What’s useful here is the idea of reporting it to the Dutch data protection authority since Booking.com is based in the Netherlands. Complaining to customer support clearly isn’t moving the needle, but regulators actually can.
If enough people file GDPR complaints, Booking won’t be able to ignore it anymore. At the very least, it forces an investigation instead of another copy paste apology email.
Definitely worth the 15 minutes if you’ve been affected.
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