Do you think there is anything to this?

Hotel Key Cards

You know how when you check out of a hotel that uses the credit-card-type room key, the clerk often will ask if you have your key(s) to turn in...or there is a box or slot on the Reception counter in which to put them? It's good for the hotel because they save money by re-using those cards. But, it's not good for you, as revealed below. From the California Bureau of Investigation:
"Southern California law enforcement professionals assigned to detect new threats to personal security issues, recently discovered what type of information is embedded in the credit card type hotel room keys used throughout the industry.
Although room keys differ from hotel to hotel, a key obtained from a well known hotel chain that was being used for a regional Identity Theft Presentation was found to contain the following the information:
a.. Customers (your) name

b.. Customers partial home address

c.. Hotel room number

d.. Check in date and check out date

e.. Customer's (your) 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 re-issues 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 in to 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!

 

Yep... yet another internet myth...

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

 

Thanks, Pitrow, that was a very useful and informative link!

 

lesh i have no idea how the hotel key card works.


luv ya

DT


errr lesh.......smack ouch

 

DT! gee wis......gee *glare*


*smack*

 

I'm sorry, but do people think before passing these wonderful tidbits along? Please do not think that this is a personal attack on you EagleDakota, because that is not what it is meant to be. Honestly though, what would it benifit a hotel to have that info on a key card? The only reason I ever asked for them back was because we had to pay for them. At $90.00 per 1000, you would want them back too.

 

At the same time, for 100 dollars a night in a hotel, the whole mere pennies the card is worth each, it might be worth it to take it with you from the hotel

 

We keep our keycards as souvenirs. My wife does scrapbooking, and likes to have a picture of our hotel room with the room key.

 

I actually read about this in an article on MSN and thought Ove never heard this one, and I cant belive anyone would belive this.....sure enough, a few days later its posted on FTE.


as far as people not checking stuff, Everytime someone emails some sorta garbage story to me, I send the url to snopes debunking it, and thank the person for wasting my bandwidth.

 

In MD, state law requires that the locks be changed after every rental. I knew a maintenance man at a Marriot, and what he would do is remove the lock cylinder and swap it with another room somewhere else in the building. Now that they use key cards, it's more easily done by computer. And I seriously doubt that the cards carry anything more than the room number and current passcode.

 

All the cards carry are the codes needed to unlock the door on the particular hotel room its assigned at that time. The codes are randomly set, and have an expiration date based on your stay.

My work trips get extended alot, and I almost always forget to stop at the desk and get my card 're-coded'.

 

sides, don't they have that info in hard copy or on a computer in the office anyway? if an employee wanted to steal it doubt he'd have to go through the trouble of getting a scanner for these cards. just write it down from the hotel records.

 

ok guys this has nothin to do with hotel keys but it is wierd pitrow posted that link to snopes i was on there a while back and reading about urban legends and i read one that was about a guy riding a motorcycle and a truck drove buy hauling sheet metal and a oeice fell off and took the motorcycle riders head off and snopes said that it was a fake urban legend and the next day on the news and in the newspaper it said that in alaska a guy was riding motorcycles with his son and a peice of sheet metal fell off a truck and bounced off the ground and took the guys head off.... weird huh?