Hotel card-keys edge toward extinction

Magnetic hotel-room keys, one of the lodging industry's most popular but controversial creations, are losing some of their attraction.
The New York Times

The story "Hotel card-keys edge toward extinction" published November 8, 2005 at 5:49 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

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[RememberEZ]

Unique keys for more than rooms

Access to objects and functionality:

RememberEZ.tripod.com/eat.html

Section I, though directed to the automobile, is most closely related to the topic of this article.

All points increase security and reduce cost.

So what's in it for the hotels?

So why would hotel put personal info on a room key card, anyway? What use would that be? It only goes in and out of the door of your hotel room.

At least most conspiracy theories have motive behind them!

I'm surprised at the NY Times for publishing an article based on pure hearsay.

[jean-luc_picard]

Hold it, wait a minute...

*If* mag-stripe card keys are encoding personal information (and nothing I've read so far indicates this is so), then I would certainly want the hotels I stay at to stop doing so. There isn't any useful reason for them to do this, and unless these cards are fully wiped after each use, it's conceivable that a single card contains information from dozens of individuals who've each been assigned the card.

But reading that people are thinking of moving from a magstripe card to a fingerprint reader scares the pants off of me. I mean, what the fizzle are they thinking? I'm certainly not going to give a hotel (and it's untrustworthy employees) access to my goshdarn *fingerprint* fer Chrissakes!

I'll live with the proximity badges, or even moving back to the old keys and tumble locks, but just say no to biometrics for all of these private businesses.

[blackhatrob]

What is biometrics

You relate biometrics to fingerprints directly in your reply. However, what are biometrics? Biometrics are basically anything that can make your body different from another (when speaking of authentication). So besides fingerprints, you can do iris scanning, or very discrete hand measurements. The hand measurement method (depending on what equipment you use) can measure everything from distance between first knuckle and second of your index ring and little finger or even the resistance that your skin/muscle/fat cells have between those points.

I personally see nothing wrong with this type of authentication.

[markisces]

Simply Not Done

I have worked in the hotel industry for many years. This is simply not done. Most of the large hotel chains: choice, best western, Consider the magnetic keys a loss, a hotel expendature, like little soaps. I would say on average about 40% of the daily occupancy actualy returns the keys upon checkout. If fact most hotel chains have proprietary reservation software that is in no way linked to the key card machines used to set a card. Even if a hotel was to input information, what would be the point if the hotel never got them back? It would be one thing if the cards new where you spent your money, or if you shopped at the local starbucks that morning, but they don't. I suspect that this rumor got started from business travelers who have a hard time with the key cards. Most of the feedback we see comes from guests that manage to demagnetize the keys, placing them next to a cell phone, or in a wallet next to other cards. Any magnet can set the card keys to not recognize the ID number of the lock. This is just a myth, plain and simple.

By the way, the next time you use one of these key cards to open your room, remember that the keys read on the "outswipe", meaning you insert your key, wait 2 seconds then pull the key out. Its high time someone told the business traveling community to READ the directions on the back of the cards.

[SusanBrown532]

Myth

I definitely think it's an urban legend. There's some more information about hotel door cards and identity theft <a href="http://www.creditbloggers.com/2005/11/hotel_card_urba.html">here .</a>