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Hotel swipe-card keys: An endangered species?
5 comments- IT TOPICS:Hardware, Mobile & Wireless, Security
According to a story in today's New York Times by travel columnist Chrisopher Elliot, the magnetic card keys used by hotels may be on the way out. In The Embattled Hotel Swipe-Card Hotel Key, Elliot says that rumors about personal data being stored on the magnetic stripes on the back of hotel card keys persist and that "the hotel business is quietly looking for alternatives to make sure the fears don't spread." Technologies under consideration include fingerprint readers, smart cards and proximity cards.
Elliott also cites my blog entry in which a source cited three instances when personal data was stored on his hotel card keys (see Swipe here to steal ID, and the follow up entries Bring your swiper and Hotel reader facts and fiction).
In his story, Elliott quotes me as saying "But what is the truth? We intend to find out." Readers might wonder what I meant by that.
While I am sure that most major hotel chains that directly own their own properties would never be so sloppy as to allow customer data to be encoded on hotel card keys, it is also possible to envision some situations where hotel card keys might contain personal data. The only way to find out for sure is to examine real cards. With the help of the Computerworld staff I am currently gathering hotel key cards, logging them and scanning them for data. I am also passing those cards by an expert who will also do a second scan to see if indeed any data resides on them. When I have enough data to say something substantive I'll post it here.
Note: For the purposes of this experiment I cannot accept cards from parties outside of Computerworld.
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