Dont give your bank details away with your holiday ending,

ivan burit · Dont give your bank details away with your holiday ending,

As i dont go abroad much these days, but know plenty that do,
I have been sent this information:

Hotel/motel 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 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

** 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.

PLEASE
FORWARD to friends and
family.

Vicar

I think that's another one of those urban myth type thingies Ivan.

Looky here.

http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/p/pasadena-keycards.htm

mojo

The couple of hotels that I've stayed in using a card-key have actually swiped the card to clear it right in front of me.
One was an expensive hotel abroad and the other a low-key one in the UK.

However must tell you this:
In the 1960s and I was living and working in london and in my youth and we would cause chaos on the Underground by - in transit between stations - wiping the magnetic strip on the ticket with a magnet. When we tried to get through the barrier at our destination the ticket wouldn't work and showed no signs of tampering.
Oh, how we laughed!!!

OK, OK, I know it's juvenile but it WAS the 1960s.
No doubt that sort of thing can't be done these days....

amenity2

Interesting,
I was a technician on the underground in those days and it was the policy of LT to go it alone with such things as ticket control and design.

The ticket was a bar code in magnetic form on the dark red strip at the back of ticket.

When trying prototypes we would dip the ticket into a solution that contained fine iron filings or chemically broken down particles held in a solution of alcohol and when dipped would show the bar code.

Needless to say no one thought for a minute that passengers would be bright enough to run a magnet over the back, but assumed it must have been the result of a fault in the ticket issuing machine, Ha! Ha!

ivan burit

The trouble is that with the many fraudulent swipings going on at the moment, to be as aware as one can be, is sometimes leaving the unsuspecting recipient of a recieved email, urgently seeking to reasure not only himself (me ? ) and others to "lets be carefull out there"
Ok i know we are not in the Hill Street Blues police Department area,
but all the same, i for one was seen to be worried if not only for myself (although i never go oversees lately) but for those that do.

A few months ago, my nearest & most expensive was subject to a brutal mugging on arrival at night in a dark area of the spanish costas.
The Mrs never got the chance to put up any sort of fight as she was dragged to the floor, still clutching her shoulder bag, but our daughter was with her, and who ended up punching and screaming only like an essex girl can at their spanish attacker...

If her credit card details had been lost, would i have still been seen to not believe the email i received from our friends who do go to the USA every year ??

Vicars post has all but disproved the truth of my posting, be it true / untrue / or marked "other"

Perhaps the worried friends who emailed me the information were just as taken in as i was, or,
was it just a joke for old ivan...............

As my sometimes clouded crystal ball can say,
time will tell.......(ending with a high pitched cackling laughter..ha..ha..ha..ha..ha..)

Halloween anyone, and then i say, "hello" back.....??