Choice Hotels breach exposes Social Security numbers and other personal data

The full story

This article is one source in a clustered incident — the cluster page carries the summary, timeline and every other outlet covering it.

Choice Hotels Data Breach Exposes Sensitive Personal Information On January 14, 2026, Choice Hotels International, Inc. experienced a data breach that compromised sensitive personal information of franchisees and franchise applicants. A threat actor utilized social engineering tactics to bypass security measures, gaining unauthorized access to an internal application that stored these records, despite the application requiring multifactor authentication. 2 sources 46