Losing Your Credit Card Information and Identity at a Hotel

If you are a frequent traveler, hotels must have become the most habitual places for spending the night or staying for a number of days or even weeks. Let's face the fact, when staying at a hotel you bear significant expenses coming as a result of paying for the room, breakfast and numerous other services offered there. Summing all the expenses up, you may be struck by the amount.

As practical people or businessmen normally tend to cut their expenditure, they found making credit card deals for hotel costs is not only a saving but sometimes even gainful venture. But there arises a question, would the customers be the same happy if they found their credit card number is encoded into the hotel room key card?

An identity theft seminar in Nevada stirred up concerns among hotel rewards credit card holders as to the safety of their financial and personal information during hotel stays. The speakers of the seminar did not mean the banal stealing of the plastic but something more sophisticated, something hidden from the eyes of a most careful and responsible cardholder.

So, what was so worrying about their words? Now, remember what device you usually use to open the hotel room. It's the credit-card style room key with the magnetic strip to unlock the door. Though the key looks like an ordinary credit card, it is prohibited by law to contain any sort of credit or personal information.

However, the debunking at the seminar showed the law is often ignored. Some of the participants who suspected they had fallen victims to ID theft were offered to check their hotel room key cards. Swiping them through a credit card reader, they saw their names, addresses and credit card numbers embedded!

Just imagine what an easy game this room key card could be to a professional identity thief armed with a magnetic card reader. Despite hotel owners' protests and statements that their room keys contained no more than the client's name and duration of his or her stay, the detectives in California found some keys to contain the major personal and credit information - the guest's name, home address, hotel room number, check-in and out dates, credit card number and the expiration date - the good enough tools to commit identity theft and credit card fraud.

Now major hotel executives assure that they have abandoned the practice of encoding plastic card keys with personal information but it doesn't mean everything is clear with this story.

Identity thieves have found another effective way to carry out their fraudulent activities. They steal the hotel plastic card keys and use them for storing your personal or credit information they have obtained through other methods.

Having the same form and size as a regular Visa or MasterCard credit card, the innocent looking hotel room key can then be easily used at ATMs or at places where the store clerks do not watch the customers making the transaction.

You may wonder now if it is safe at all to stay at any hotel, never knowing when your personal data may be stolen through the hotel room card key. If you are going to stay over at a hotel, there are a number of important tips for you to remember:

• Hotels do not destroy the card key after you leave. They simply keep it in a drawer of the front desk until a new guest comes and they issue another key. Remember that you legally can request the card key and then destroy it at your discretion.
• Never leave the hotel room plastic card key out of sight and never turn it in to the front desk when checking out of the room.

Remember, the card key is your property and you will not be charged for it if you take it or destroy it. The protection of your private and credit information is within your power as well as an unclouded stay at your favorite hotel.

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