Rumours that hotel key-cards used to access rooms actually store customers personal information, and can thus be used for identity theft are spreading online. Modern versions of the rumour encourage readers to take a magnet with them on their excursions to wipe any information that may be stored on their access cards.
You can see a 2015 version of this rumour here –
PLEASE READ THIS IF YOU STAY IN HOTELS AND ARE GIVEN A CARD FOR ACCESS TO YOUR ROOM.
This is a really useful information for anyone who goes on holiday where the hotel uses key cards xxx
Always take a small fridge magnet on your holiday, they come in handy at the end of it. Never even thought about key cards containing anything other than an access code for the room ?
Ever wonder what is on your magnetic Hotel room 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 hand them back 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 don’t 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 thus erased. 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: 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.
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!
OR,
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: Metropolitan Police, London.
PLEASE FORWARD to all those friends & family who travel.
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The rumours are false and date back to at least 2003 in a case of Chinese whispers resulting from a misplaced warning from the Pasadena police department. According to the subsequent retraction, Detective Sergeant Kathryn Jorge of the Pasadena Police Department shared a warning that she heard from a fraud detective who claimed he had personally seen a hotel keycard contain personal information belonging to the customer to which it had been issued.
However according to the retraction, the information had been shared before the fraud team had time to “correctly evaluate the risk.” The retraction claimed that to clear up any confusion, the police department contacted several large hotel brands who confirmed that no such information is stored on their keycards.
As of today, detectives have contacted several large hotels and computer companies using plastic card key technology and they assure us that personal information, especially credit card information, is not included on their key cards. The one incident referred to appears to be several years old, and with today’s newer technology, it would appear that no hotels engage in the practice of storing personal information on key cards. Please share this information with anyone who has a concern over the initial information send out to others as a precautionary measure.
After some time working in hotels ourselves, we can confirm that even in our own limited experience, we see no reason why personal information would be stored on keycards. Most hotels simply have no reason to store such information on keycards because the relevant personal information of a customer is stored on the hotel customer database, and thus there is no reason to duplicate this data.
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Keycards contain only information that is relevant to the card itself, and this primarily is where it is – and is not – allowed. So for example a particular keycard contains the room number, and potentially information about other areas of a hotel to which the person issued is allowed access. The keycard may also contain information relating to the expiry date.
A number of variants of this rumour have persisted since 2003, but most contain little or no truth. (Yes, you can potentially wipe a keycard using a magnet since most use a magnetic strip.) Whilst many hotels will not charge you for failing to return a keycard, there is very little reason not to do so.