Travel Security Tip

[Mergie Master]

From the base paper the Ft Jackson Leader

Magnetic strip key cards: the hidden danger

The holiday season is quickly approaching, and many travel plans will be made. A lurking danger to foil carefully laid travel plans is the magnetic strip key card that many hotels issue in place of ordinary metal keys. They may leave guests open to identity theft. Hotels ask guests to return the cards at check out but the cards sometimes contain personal information that can be accessed for criminal purposes, said Detective Sgt. K. Jorge of the California Bureau of Investigation. Jorge said that while hotels differ in theinformation they put on keys, a key obtained from an unnamed hotel chain contained information such as: name, partial home address, hotel room number, check in and check out dates and credit card number and expiration date. This information was available for employees or any other person with access to a hotel scanner, he said. An employee could take a handful of such cards home, scan the information onto a lap-top computer, andshop online using the stolen data. Army lodging, including all of Fort Jackson’s lodging, does not put any of the above information on the hotel keys they issue, said the Fort Jackson Lodging Front Office Manager Lisa Leavell. To comply with Army Lodging Standards, she said, only the room number is loaded into key cards issued to guests staying at any of Fort Jackson’s on-post lodging facilities. To protect the privacy and security of guests, the room number is not written on the cards or sleeves hotel personnel issue with the cards, Leavell said. This is to prevent the cards from being used to break into rooms if they happen to be lost by guests and picked up by others. “It is a physical security issue,” she said. “We highly encourage guests not to put their room number on the sleeve (the card itself cannot be written on).”Civilian hotels that do include personal information on key cards sometimes do not remove it until the card is reissued to another guest, Jorge said. Guests’ personal information can be stored, usually in a drawer, where it can be accessible to identity thieves. “Keep the cards, take them home withyou, or destroy them,” he said. “Never leave them behind in the room or room waste basket,and never turn them in to the front desk when you check out of a room.”Guests cannot be held financially liable for failing to turn in key cards, Jorge said,since it is illegal for hotels to charge guests to replace the cards.Since the danger of identity theft does not exist with key cards issued at military establishments,guests can return key cards when they check out of Army lodging. Robert.Bellin@jackson.army.mil

[Spike]

Thanks MM I work out of town alot and never new that, I'll keep that in mind.