I just found out I have been perpetuating false information for the last few years. It’s about hotel key cards.

Those hotel key cards don’t have our personal information encoded in them. I was told they did and that this information could fall into the hands of thieves. Even though I had a nagging question about why the hotel would do that, I continued to spread the untruth.

Today I was on Snopes.com and got the whole scoop. The story originated in 2003 in California with a police detective who misunderstood something she had heard.

Snopes states that hotels have no practical reason to put your credit card information on your hotel key card. Hotels have secure data bases for such information. What’s encoded is: the room number, access code, activation and expiration dates.

What about hotel key cards that allow you to use them as credit cards? These cards aren’t really credit cards. The card simply has a flag in it indicating that the guest has a credit card on file with the resort or cruise ship. So, when you check out of the resort or the cruise is over, your purchases are added to your credit card bill.

Read more: http://southerncolorado.bbb.org/post/the-truth-about-hotel-key-cards-6078