Hotel card reader facts and fiction

This hysteria began when a

This hysteria began when a certain detective from a not-so-big city, arrested a credit card fraudster and while sorting through the evidence, found (in addition to counterfeit and stolen credit cards)"white plastic" and hotel room, key cards. The mag strip on all cards is essentially real-to-real recording tape. Obviously, this tape can have information recorded on it. When a thief with "skimmed" account numbers needs a vehicle to carry a stolen account number into a store, the number can be encoded overriding the original information on any card. The detective, who in the case started this fear, had a card reader and found credit card information on a hotel key card. It was put on the card by the arrestee who had been encoding his miscellaneous plastic with his own equipment. A district attorney in the detective's city went public with this and you see the result.
I have been been involved with the credit card industry and law enforcement for many years, and have analyzed POS ops for the lodging industry for almost twenty, and to my knowledge there is no link between authorization terminals and access key terminals (other than resorts that have a link for guest expense accounts to the guest room)
Hope this helps.

Actually this is quite true

Actually this is quite true of some hotels. I have been doing this for a couple years and have noticed that things are actually getting better. A number of hotels have ceased the practice. The types of hotels that I found this info on usually range from the 3-star to 5-star hotels - usually the lower quality hotels did not bother spending the money on newer systems that would enable this 'feature'.

Personally I do not understand what the major fuss is considering how many times people hand that same credit card to some unknown clerk or waitress and the card is taken our of their line of site for various periods of time. To me that is as big as or bigger risk than the hotel key. At least you can take the key with you for disposal - it is much harder to keep site of that credit card you surrender for payment.

Until Peter's process is

Until Peter's process is duplicated, we have to look at his results with skepticism. Forget the legal department, if we know what kind of card reader he used, then we could all get one and try it for ourselves. And tell us about the hotel as well. Was it a 1 star "no-tell-motel" or a 5 star Marriott? Scientific Process is a beautiful thing unless you're trying to perpetrate a hoax.

It's BS until you name the

It's BS until you name the hotel chains. Give them a chance to respond.

RE: "[Peter Wallace]

RE: "[Peter Wallace] stated...that he would like to respond, but is awaiting clearance from his organization's legal dept. before he can do so."

This is a pretty strong indication that it's all cr_p. Wallace hasn't named his employer anywhere, or said they were involved in any way, so they have no liability or business interest in this matter. I think he made the whole thing up. Ask him what brand of card reader he used.

While I would like to

While I would like to believe that the information contained on a room key is strictly the key code for my room, I have no way of knowing for sure. I would think that with the prevalance of phishing now, that we would have heard more about these 'dangers' in the media.

I tend to beleive that there really isn't any truly valuable info on my room key, or some unscrupulous person would have had it already.

I've been a CIO in the

I've been a CIO in the hospitality industry for over 12 years (including, most recently, over eight years in a large Las Vegas hotel/casino), and no system I've come in contact with has ever written credit card info to a room key. Some systems allow the hotel to encode other information on other tracks, but not credit card info. For instance, in addition to room key info, some casinos encode their slot club or frequent guest number on a separate track so the customer can use their room key in slot machines or for ratings on table games. Hotels can also encode room charge info on the keys to allow the customer easier access to room charges while in their various restaurants and retail outlets. There really is no reason for a hotel to encode a credit card number on a key that I can see.

"I am surprised that no one

"I am surprised that no one else among this tech savvy group has tried this and reported in."

Especially not the guy who "reported" this BS in the first place! :q

Virtually all hotels card

Virtually all hotels card key system is seperate from the billing computer. There is no cross over of personnel data, only a room number that the key will unlock.