NYT has a story on privacy concerns reagarding personal information stored on hotel swipe cards:
According to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, 83 percent of hotels have electronic locks, and a majority of these use magnet swipe-card technology. No one expects these systems to vanish overnight. For one thing, they are cheap - plastic keys cost about 10 cents each. They are also a snap to use - just swipe the card through the reader and you are in your room. And they are without question more efficient than the old-fashioned, easy-to-lose metal keys.But they also have a bad reputation among some business travelers. For several years, rumors have circulated on the Internet about privacy concerns with magnetic cards. The rumors appeared to originate in 1999, when the police department in Pasadena, Calif., investigated a claim that personal information had been extracted from a hotel key card. Officials ultimately concluded that private data was not being downloaded onto the cards.
That did nothing to quiet the negative buzz. Kevin Coffey, a travel safety consultant based in Los Angeles, said the report only ignited more speculation. "You may have the major hotel chains saying, 'We don't do it,' " he said of the possible misuse of magnetic keys. "But business travelers are thinking, What if they go overseas? Those hotels aren't scrutinized the same way as the ones in the United States. What if they're putting our personal information on those cards?"
A few weeks ago, though, the rumors boiled over after Robert L. Mitchell, a national correspondent for the trade publication Computerworld, posted an item on his blog questioning the security of magnetic cards. Mr. Mitchell reported that Peter Wallace, an information technology manager for a travel agency in Wyomissing, Pa., had discovered personal information encoded on key cards issued by at least three different hotel chains.
Mr. Wallace would not discuss his findings with me, claiming that the report had hurt his business, but insisted his earlier statements were accurate. "Do the research," he said. "The truth is out there."
If true, this would break (at least) the first and second laws of identity.
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