Hotel warning
 

I received this from a fellow spiney and thought it very applicable because of all the traveling of spine patients;

HOTEL KEY CARDS

Ever wonder what is on your magnetic key card?

Answer:
a. Customer's name
b. Customer's partial home address
c. Hotel room number
d. Check-in date and out dates
e. Customer's credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device,
access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.

Simply put, hotels do not erase the information on these cards until an employee reissues the card to the next hotel guest. At that time, the new guest's information is electronically "overwritten" on the card and the previous guest's information is erased in the overwriting process.

But until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it usually is kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!

The bottom line is: Keep the cards, take them home with you, or destroy them. NEVER leave them behind in the room or room wastebasket, and NEVER turn them into the front desk when you check out of a room. They will not charge you for the card (it's illegal) and you'll be sure you are not leaving a lot of valuable personal information on it that could be easily lifted off with any simple scanning device card reader.

For the same reason, if you arrive at the airport and discover you still have the card key in your pocket, do not toss it in an airport trash basket. Take it home and destroy it by cutting it up, especially through the electronic information strip!

If you have a small magnet, pass it across the magnetic strip several times. Then try it in the door, it will not work. It erases everything on the card.

Information courtesy of: Pasadena Police Department


PLEASE FORWARD to friends and family

I used to design systems that use magnetic stripes... I knew this wasn't right, but took a quick luck for the info to help. Snopes.com is an excellent source when dealing with urban myths.

http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/hotelkey.asp

Mark

PS... snopes.com is still the internet... don't believe anything you read there.

thanks Mark,

Never heard of snopes but glad to read 'the truth'. Happy to hear that Diane is doing great and hope all continues in that direction.

Did you ever plan on coming back or perhaps you should buy a small house there!

All my best, Dale

thanks
 

This was an interesting read..
Recently when in Mexico my friend didn't turn in the card key with the reasoning that personel information was on the card key. I had never even thought about that and after reading the information here, I feel better about my unaware status as I would have turned the card key in, always have although maybe now I would think twice about it even if it's just a card with room info on it.

thanks!