Hotel Key Cards

[David Morton]

From an old skipper of mine from Shackleton days. He adds a comment that maybe it may be a hoax but what have you got to lose by destroying the key card at the end of your stay. It never really applied to me as the company always picked the hotel and it was a lottery as to which crew got what rooms. [ps : I always got the best room]

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: Metropolitan Police Service.

Guys you know this makes sense so please forward it to friends and family
Dave.


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[Dimi Terleckyj]

Hi David

One of the greatest myths in today's world is the notion that anyone or everyone has privacy or confidentiality.

For the last 30 years I have run my own electronic security business and as a result now realise that any and all information about a person's so called private affairs and personal details are so freely accessable to anyone without any trouble at all.

From the day you are born all details are recorded and the database of info is continually updated throughout the rest of your life via all the normal transactions and events a person is involved in during the course of being human.

Medical files and history, Job applications, vehicle purchases, rego, licenses, taxation, rentals, house ownership, banking transactions, passports, etc, etc etc.

Due to the nature of my business I have personally had access to some of the databanks and info and just to satisfy my own curiosity decided to look at my own info as recorded.

I was absolutely amazed at the amount of information and the amount of data sharing that the various agencies make available to each other without the knowledge of the public.

In this day and age of computors and government controls privacy and anonimity do not exist in any form whatsoever.

Some of the recorded details do not even have any relevance to anything I can see would be required but never the less it is still there on record for whatever it may be used for.

To think you can remain "private" is a futile waste of time and energy.
How this information is used or misused is totally out of any one person's control.

Food for thought.

Dimi

 

[Rick Muck- Mark IV]

Maybe not...........

snopes.com: Hotel Key Card Identity Theft

 

[John]

Dimi, very scary but very true, a few years ago i moved with my family to Mt Isa {why i still cant figure out] to work, not long after we arrived my wifes biological farther died back in NZ and her mum couldnt contact us as we hadnt got around to notifiying them of our new address, all we had told them was we were moving up to the Isa, her mum contacted Mt Isa police , no good there, then brother inlaw contacted a freind who knew some one somewhere and within a half an hr, found where i was both working and living, and the police came around with the bad news, source of info, my wages were direct credited into bank, and thats how they found us so quickly, have been consious ever since
John

 

[Seymour Snerd]

Maybe not...........

snopes.com: Hotel Key Card Identity Theft

Thank you, Mark.

 

[Rick Muck- Mark IV]

Thank you, Mark.

Mark, Rick, Sh!thead, they are all the same!

As they said on the Simpsons, "Does the government have your DNA? Have you ever handled a penny? Why do you think they keep them in circulation?"

It just amazes me that people blindly post stuff that comes into their email "in box" and take it as gospel because it "came from the internet"!!!!

 

[Dave Wood]

It just amazes me that people blindly post stuff that comes into their email "in box" and take it as gospel because it "came from the internet"!!!!

Me too, I routinely delete one of my sister's e-mails because EVERYTHING she gets she forwards....never even checks the stuff out.
I heard about key cards a few years ago, at that time the hotel I stayed at informed me that they didn't do that, although some still did. They didn't say whether or not they used to. There are advantages to having a "poor" financial portrait.
While it may no longer be a standard practice, it apparently has some basis. Like many things, the rumor mill is even more active with the internet. In the early 90s, prior to the broad use of the internet, the rumor circulated that "Snapple" was owned by the KKK...because their clear Root Beer had a K on it..... As a Seinfeld fan, I was skeptical, he used it in several shows as an in show advertising( something he, or his sister, was quite good at). IT apparently was so "viral", even pre-internet, that the 2 brothers that owned it made several news appearances because ...They were Jewish and the K stood for KOSHER. It was funny to me that the same people that were still spreading that, years later, felt so informed yet somehow all the media around the brothers escaped them. The rumor, of course, has faded...but every so often I still hear it repeated as fact. You can't change stupid.
In retrospect, you might wonder if a white supremist group or the KKK started it. Ironic.

"Burn the Witch".. Monty Python and the Holy Grail