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Claim: Hotel room keycards are routinely encoded with personal information which can be easily harvested by thieves.
Examples:
Origins: The notion that hotel key cards are routinely encoded with all sorts of personal information (thus making them dangerous should they fall into the hands identity theft scammers) began in 2003 when an overzealous detective with the Pasadena (California) Police Department sent around a warning
This urban legend can be traced back to an e-mail that a detective from the Pasadena Police Department sent out more than four years ago.
The misinformation wave created by the detective's erroneous "One of our investigators was at a meeting with other fraud detectives," says Ronnie Nanning of the Pasadena police. "Someone there happened to say that they heard that it was possible to put this information on this key card." The detective notified other detectives as a "heads-up" to the possibility. That information was shared with others in the police department, who then passed it on before the risk could be evaluated, she says. It took on a life of its own. Nanning says her department contacted major hotel chains at that time, and "were told time and time again that this was not the policy."
On October 6, 2003, Detective Sergeant Kathryn Jorge of the Pasadena Police Department received information from a group of Southern California fraud detectives who had formed a fraud investigations network through a local internet carrier. One of the members of this group from
another San Gabriel Valley agency reported that in an investigation that he was personally involved in, he came across a plastic hotel card key from a major hotel that had personal information that could potentially lead to identify theft and fraud. This information included names, addresses, length of stay, and credit card numbers. This detective took the precautionary measure of notifying the detectives in the network prior to seeing if this practice was standard in the industry.
Hotels generally have no practical or functional reason for wanting to encode customers' personal information on their room key cards; most of them have databases that store the very same customer data, so they have no reason to encode anything more than basic information (e.g., room number, access code, activation and expiration dates) on the key cards themselves. In fact, even that basic information isn't really stored directly on the cards themselves As the investigation into this potential fraud risk continued, this information was shared with other members of the Pasadena Police Department and personnel chose to share this information with others before we could correctly evaluate the risk. This has caused a chain reaction of probably thousands of people being given this information before the risk was evaluated thoroughly. 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. There was never the intent of the Pasadena Police Department to forward this information to others before the risk was evaluated. The information was forwarded by individuals as a possible precautionary note of interest only.
Certainly, modern security systems are sufficiently sophisticated that personal identifying information "could" be encoded onto hotel card-keys. To do so, however, would be pointless and would create additional work (and expense). Hotel card keys would, obviously, contain a "serial number" (to identify the individual physical card); a room number that the card is programmed to open; and the beginning and ending dates for which the card is valid. But there would be no basis whatsoever for the card to contain the occupant's name or credit card information. The VP has personally verified with their
A contact with considerable experience in hotel operations similarly told us:
I have worked as a desk clerk for three hotels: Holiday Inn, Best Western and the Howard Johnson. In all cases, the TESA lock system (key-card) was not connected to the front desk computer in any way. To create a key for a guest, we typed the room number, the number of nights of the stay and how many keys we wanted to create. That's all the information that was recorded. There was no way of encoding any other information.
Even in cases where hotel key cards can be used to purchase goods and services (e.g., at a resort complex such as Walt Disney World or on cruise ships), guests' credit card information is not encoded on the cards themselves; the cards simply contain a flag indicating that the guest has a credit card on file with the resort and is authorized to charge purchases to his room.
I would be most surprised to find out that any hotel encoded other information on the key-card. Current technology allows for guests to quick-checkout with the pay-per-view movie system on the TV, so there isn't any need to have more than the room number and length of stay on the In January 2006, Computerworld investigated the key card rumors by collecting and examining over
As part of a Computerworld investigation into the allegations, reporters and other staff members who traveled last fall brought back
We also purchased our own MagTek card scanner and have scanned several dozen magnetic room keys we acquired during our various hotel stays over the last few years and likewise found not a single key with any personal information stored on it.
We then sent the cards to Terry Benson, engineering group leader at MagTek, for a more in-depth examination using specialized equipment. MagTek also gathered cards from its own staff. In all, Most cards were completely unreadable with an off-the-shelf card reader. Neither Benson nor Computerworld found any personally identifiable information on them. Based on these results, we think it's unlikely that hotel guests in the U.S. will find any personal information on their hotel card keys A somewhat related but distinctly different theft scheme involves crooks' stealing credit card information (through other means) and then encoding that information onto hotel keycards:
It never fails. Emptying your pockets after a vacation or business trip, you fish out the hotel key you've forgotten to return. In fact, hotel key cards are unwittingly taken so often that thieves are taking advantage of public and industry complacency on the issue by storing stolen credit card information on the cards and using them like debit or credit cards.
However, this scheme doesn't depend upon harvesting personal information by reading it from returned hotel key cards; it's based upon criminals' obtaining personal information (such as credit card or ATM card numbers and PINs) through other methods and then using discarded
It works like this: a thief gets his hands on a supply of key cards, either by having a hotel employee steal a batch or by buying them. The thief then uses a commercially available decoder/encoder to read information off a stolen credit card and transfer it to an innocent-looking hotel key card. Because the new generation of key cards is the same size as credit and debit cards, the key cards can then be used at ATMs and at point-of-sale swipe readers, where store clerks frequently do not watch patrons performing the transactions. The scam recently came to light in southern California when police searched the hideouts of Armenian gang members and found a cache of key cards from a specific hotel. According to Larry Hanna, a detective in the Las Vegas Police Department's intelligence unit who works closely with Southern California police, authorities decided to read what was encoded on the cards. They came up with credit, ATM, and debit card numbers, but no room information. Blair Abbott, a Phoenix-area detective who has been investigating this type of crime, notes that a few key cards found on a suspect will not raise the same suspicion as would several credit cards bearing different names. Having multiple hotel keys is neither illegal nor uncommon. Abbott also believes that the scheme is causing a resurgence in the use of readers that steal information from bank and credit cards at ATM machines. His firm investigated a criminal group that devised a credit card reader that could be placed over the normal credit card slot in ATMs and other card readers. The device has all the appearances of a regular card reader, but it is distinguished by protruding from the face of the ATM by several inches. Abbott adds that clever criminals have even created their own bogus ATM machines. When the card information is lifted and placed on hotel key cards, it can be used not only at point of sale and at ATMs but also in association with accomplices working at stores, banks, and credit card companies. Worse yet, the victim continues to use his or her credit card and will attest to having it when contacted by the credit card company, which delays detection of the fraud. Law enforcement has had to rely on the laziness of criminals to spot the scheme, Abbott says. Carrying several cards from the same hotel arouses suspicion, says Abbott, as does punching holes in cards and attaching them to a key chain. It is unclear how widespread the scam is, but Hanna points out that it is so well known in Glendale, California, that the police keep a reader at the booking desk to scan all confiscated hotel key cards. Abbott says that the ploy is making the rounds in New York and Chicago as well. Nonetheless, those who remain concerned that they may be discarding sensitive personal information with their hotel keys won't do any harm by following the piece of advice offered in the message quoted at the head of this page: When you check out of your hotel, simply retain or destroy your keycard. Your former room's access code will be changed before the room is assigned to a new guest, and few (if any) hotels demand that keycards be returned or charge customers who fail to do so. Just be sure that you are the one who retains or destroys the card. Additional information:
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