An urban legend tells the story of a friend of a friend went to a hotel, turned in his/her keycard, and became a victim of identity theft. Apparently, the desk-clerk gets the credit card information off the room key and goes on a shopping trip… or something like that.
Two sides to every story.
One side is that the story is just that – an urban legend. Hotels don't link your credit card to your room key.
But there's another side to the story. About.com likes information to be "sourced", however some sources for this article wished to remain anonymous. Reasons primarily revolved around their continued employment. Your Guide prefers to err on the side of caution and provide you with the information obtained while investigating the topic. At the very least, you will be able to ask direct and specific questions if you ever need to.
What's really on that card?
Since a hotel keycard now looks like a credit card (height, width, thickness, ¼ inch magnetic stripe on the back) it's easy to make the assumption that it holds the same kind of information. However, it is only a storage medium, like a CD, DVD, or flash drive. It only holds the information that is encoded on the magnetic stripe.
Identity thieves can use any magnetic-striped medium to create a bogus credit/debit card, just as you can put any kind of information on a flash-drive. All they need is a computer and a magnetic strip "encoder", both of which are available at many retail electronics stores.
When it comes to hotel keycards, the manager of a local hotel (who wishes to remain anonymous) says to watch how the card is encoded by the desk clerk. If the keycard must be swiped through a machine separate from the registration computer, it is programmed through the security system, which only deals with room numbers, dates and times. However if the encoder is connected directly to the registration computer, it is possible to put any information on the card that is in that computer, including payment information. If you can use your keycard at the hotel to bill something to your room, the information is probably linked somewhere in the system.
From the hotel's perspective, there is no reason to put payment information on a rooms keycard, and there are plenty of legal reasons not to do so.
A source of confusion.
Many people believe that the ID card they were given on a vacation cruise has far more information on it, including banking information.
Keycards look pretty much the same, with the exception of graphics printed on the card. Cruise ships are no exception, and they use the same technology for their passenger identification cards. This may be a source of confusion for anyone who has taken a cruise. Standard procedure for one cruise line is to issue the card when you first board the ship, and take your picture. Whenever you leave the ship, you are required to present your card for reboarding. The security staff puts the card into a slot (like the credit-card slot on a gaspump) and the computer brings up your photo from the ship's file. This is how they track whether or not someone is still on the ship. This also allows the cruise line to give authorities a recent picture of you, if you should go missing during one of your jaunts ashore.
The same card gives access to your stateroom, and may be used for purchases on the ship.
It's easy to understand why someone would think the cruise-ship keycard holds more information than a hotel keycard. But a security representative with a major cruise line (again, wishing to remain anonymous) says the only information on the card is an identification number. What comes up on the security screen on the ship is a file on the ships computer, that matches that identification number.
In other words, a keycard is useless to an identity thief unless they put information on the magnetic stripe themselves. So it's fine to keep your keycards as souvenirs of your trip. If there's any doubt in your mind, though, it won't hurt a thing to shred your keycards when you're done with them. Most home and office shredders have slots designed to destroy credit cards and even CDs.
