Inportant information for you traverler's This seems plausible. This has been around before but in case you haven't seen it, please read. IMPORTANT what is on your hotel door 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 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! Information courtesy of: Pasadena Police Department PLEASE FORWARD to friends and family. Who would have ever thought of such a thing? You wonder how your identnity is stolen, here's a possible reason. |
WOW!! thats terrible :( thanks for the heads up ;) |
Thank you so much for that info. |
Yes--we bring them home and put them through a credit card shredder. |
YIKES!!! I didn't know this!!! :eek: I'm traveling next week, staying at two hotels. Does it take special equipment to retrieve the information or is it relatiely easy (I don't mean for the hotel employees - but for the person who might retrieve it out of the trash)? Thanks so much for the information!!! |
Wow! Thanks for the information! I'm sure that will be helpful in the future. |
But Hotels usually charge you $10 per card if lost how do we tell them we lost them and not get charged for them ? |
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I would guess if you had that info and told them at the desk they would not to anything about it afterall. |
Thanks for that info. It might even be worth $10 if it's not illegal in my state (NY)for the hotel to charge me. Judy |
Maybe we should pay with travelers checks. We have always taken those card with us when we check out and no one has ever said anything. |
We went to a number of hotels in the past week, and I got a chance to ask receptionists if this is true. They told me that it is not. The only thing that is on those cards are the combinations to open doors. ;) Here is some more info from snopes.com: http://www.snopes.com/crime/warnings/hotelkey.asp |
Most hotels (Disney World, for example) I have been to tell you just to keep them. |
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