Southern California law enforcement professionals assigned to detect new threats to personal security issues, recently discovered what type of information is embedded in the credit card type hotel room keys used through-out the industry.

Although room keys differ from hotel to hotel, a key obtained from the Double Tree chain that was being used for a regional Identity Theft Presentation was found to contain the following the information:

• Customers (your) name
• Customers partial home address
• Hotel room number
• Check in date and check out date
• Customers (your) credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.

Simply put, hotels do not erase these cards until an employee issues the card to the next hotel guest. It is usually kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!!!!

The bottom line is, keep the cards or destroy them! NEVER leave them behind and NEVER turn them in to the front desk when you check out of a room. They will not charge you for the card.

---

[Collected via e-mail, 2005]

Just received this and thought it was worth sending around — with so much identity theft going around, makes sense!!

Remember this for the future:

You know how when you check out of a hotel that uses the credit-card-type room key, the clerk often will ask if you have your key(s) to turn in...or there is a box or slot on the Reception counter in which to put them? It's good for the hotel because they save money by re-using those cards. But, it's not good for you, as revealed below.

From the Colorado Bureau of Investigation:

"Southern California law enforcement professionals assigned to Detect new threats to personal security issues, recently discovered what type of information is embedded in the credit card type hotel room keys used throughout the industry.

Although room keys differ from hotel to hotel, a key obtained from the "Double Tree" chain that was being used for a regional Identity Theft Presentation was found to contain the following the information:

a.. Customers (your) name
b.. Customers partial home address
c.. Hotel room number
d.. Check in date and check out date
e.. Customer's (your) credit card number and expiration date!

When you turn them in to the front desk your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a hand full of cards home and using a scanning device, access the information onto a laptop computer and go shopping at your expense.

Simply put, hotels do not erase the information on these cards until an employee re-issues the card to the next hotel guest. At that time, the new guest's information is electronically "overwritten" on the card and the previous guest's information is erased in the overwriting process. But until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it usually is kept in a drawer at the front desk with YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!!!!

The bottom line is: Keep the cards, take them home with you, or destroy them. NEVER leave them behind in the room or room wastebasket, and NEVER turn them in to the front desk when you check out of a room. They will not charge you for the card (it's illegal) and you'll be sure you are not leaving a lot of valuable personal information on it that could be easily lifted off with any simple scanning device card reader. For the same reason, if you arrive at the airport and discover you still have the card key in your pocket, do not toss it in an airport trash basket. Take it home and destroy it by cutting it up, especially through the electronic information strip!

The Truth
The notion that hotel key cards are routinely encoded with all sorts of personal information (thus making them dangerous should they fall into the hands of identity theft scammers) began in 2003 when an overzealous detective with the Pasadena (California) Police Department sent around a warning e-mail based on a misunderstanding of something she'd heard:

This urban legend can be traced back to an e-mail that a detective from the Pasadena Police Department sent out more than four years ago.

"One of our investigators was at a meeting with other fraud detectives," says Ronnie Nanning of the Pasadena police. "Someone there happened to say that they heard that it was possible to put this information on this key card."

The detective notified other detectives as a "heads-up" to the possibility. That information was shared with others in the police department, who then passed it on before the risk could be evaluated, she says. It took on a life of its own.

Nanning says her department contacted major hotel chains at that time, and "were told time and time again that this was not the policy."

The misinformation wave created by the detective's erroneous e-mail was so large the Pasadena police eventually issued a retraction explaining that the information it contained was based upon a single incident from several years earlier, and that they had no evidence the warning reflected a current or ongoing issue:

On October 6, 2003, Detective Sergeant Kathryn Jorge of the Pasadena Police Department received information from a group of Southern California fraud detectives who had formed a fraud investigations network through a local internet carrier. One of the members of this group from another San Gabriel Valley agency reported that in an investigation that he was personally involved in, he came across a plastic hotel card key from a major hotel that had personal information that could potentially lead to identify theft and fraud. This information included names, addresses, length of stay, and credit card numbers. This detective tookthe precautionary measure of notifying the detectives in the network prior to seeing if this practice was standard in the industry.

As the investigation into this potential fraud risk continued, this information was shared with other members of the Pasadena Police Department and personnel chose to share this information with others before we could correctly evaluate the risk. This has caused a chain reaction of probably thousands of people being given this information before the risk was evaluated thoroughly.

As of today, detectives have contacted several large hotels and computer companies using plastic card key technology and they assure us that personal information, especially credit card information, is not included on their key cards. The one incident referred to appears to be several years old, and with today's newer technology, it would appear that no hotels engage in the practice of storing personal information on key cards. Please share this information with anyone who has a concern over the initial information send out to others as a precautionary measure.

There was never the intent of the Pasadena Police Department to forward this information to others before the risk was evaluated. The information was forwarded by individuals as a possible precautionary note of interest only.

Hotels generally have no practical or functional reason for wanting to encode customers' personal information on their room key cards; most of them have databases that store the very same customer data, so they have no reason to encode anything more than basic information (e.g., room number, access code, activation and expiration dates) on the key cards themselves. In fact, even that basic information isn't really stored directly on the cards themselves — it's encoded as a serial number which a door lock read, decodes, and uses to determine whether or not the inserted key is authorized to open it. We verified all of this with the Vice President of Loss Prevention for the Hilton hotel chain.

Hotel keycards contain personal information is a post from: Silly Hoaxes

Subject: UPS Uniforms

Please take this seriously!

If you are driving at night and are attacked with eggs, do not operate the wiper and spray and water. Because eggs mixed with water become milky and block your vision up to 92.5%

Then you are forced to stop at the road side and become a victim of robbers. This is a new technique used by robbers in Johor Bahru.

Please inform your friends and relatives!!

If you are driving at night and eggs are thrown at your windshield.

Do not operate the wiper and spray any water because eggs mixed with water become milky and block your vision up to 92.5% so you are forced to stop at the roadside and become a victim of robbers. This is a new technique used by robbers. Please inform your friends and relatives. This also happens on interstates near exits.

Please take this seriously!
If you are driving at night and are attacked with eggs, do not operate the wiper and spray and water. Because eggs mixed with water become milky and block your vision up to 92.5%
Then you are forced to stop at the road side and become a victim of robbers. This is a new technique used by robbers in Johor Bahru.
Please inform your friends and relatives!!
If you are driving at night and eggs are thrown at your windshield.
Do not operate the wiper and spray any water because eggs mixed with water become milky and block your vision up to 92.5% so you are forced to stop at the roadside and become a victim of robbers. This is a new technique used by robbers. Please inform your friends and relatives. This also happens on interstates near exits.

Truth:  Breathless e-mailed warnings about the (usually false) latest ways in which thieves are purported to be getting motorists to pull over so they can be preyed upon are nothing new: a few we've previously documented include claims that gangs of robbers were placing tire-puncturing spikes in shopping mall parking lots, or affixing plastic baskets to the undersides of targeted vehicles (thereby prompting drivers to stop to investigate the noise), pouring sugar into gas tanks, festooning cars' windshields with flyers, and even acting drunk or as if they'd been struck by other cars.

Our first sighting of this November 2009 warning about eggs being thrown at windshields was a 29 October 2009 YahooGroups mail list post. That earlier version, while it also asserted the claim of water mixed with raw egg's obscuring a windshield and bruited the (absurdly precise) 92.5% figure, differed from what has  become the canonical form of the warning in that it stated motorists so attacked would become prey to "robbers/carnappers" and recommended those so assaulted instead drive to "a well lit place w/ many people or nearest police station" rather than stop.

Later forms of the e-mail added further flourishes, such as "used by robbers" morphing into "used by robbers in Johor Bahru" (the capital city of Johor in southern Malaysia), the addition of the claim that these attacks "happens on interstates near exits," and most commonly the inclusion of this new paragraph which blames matters on the flagging economy: "Folks are becoming more and more cruel daily. But this is just the beginning of pangs of distress. With the decline in economy and job losses, we can expect anything. Just can't be too careful these days."

Though we've queried our police contacts and scoured news reports looking for accounts of robberies and carjackings effected by disabling target vehicles by pelting them with raw eggs, we weren't able to find any such occurrences in the U.S. Rather, we did locate news stories about police cars so pelted, with the officers

retaliating by giving chase to the miscreants who'd thrown eggs at them. In various news accounts we found, officers not only were able to see well enough through their poultrified windows to go after the bad guys, they succeeded in running them to ground and bringing them to justice. Most tellingly, such accounts made no mention of the gendarmes so assaulted experiencing difficulty in seeing well enough through their egged windshields to give chase.

While a mixture of raw egg and water vigorously stirred together in a glass will produce a somewhat milky-looking liquid (which might be the source of this tale), there's nothing about the interaction of egg and water that renders the resulting combination into a substance guaranteed to completely block a driver's vision. Egg alone or egg-and-water solutions are thin liquids and so are relatively easy to see through, with the vehicle's wipers generally sweeping away the worst of the mess fairly easily. Moreover, it would take a number of extremely well-placed eggs (a hen's typical offerings aren't that big) to splat a windshield so thoroughly as to completely impair the driver's view and force him to stop immediately — unless the visibility conditions were already poor, a motorist with a splattered windshield would generally still to be able to see well enough to continue driving out of range of the egg-throwing hooligans to a safe stopping place.

Certainly miscreants have long engaged in the practice of launching objects (e.g., rocks, eggs, firecrackers, paintballs) at moving cars in order to startle motorists into stopping and getting out of their automobiles (typically as a prank, but sometimes as a means of setting up the theft of a vehicle and/or the driver's possessions), but that information is neither new nor shocking.

Using Eggs to Rob Drivers is a post from: Silly Hoaxes

Subject: UPS Uniforms

Government Warning regarding purchase of UPS uniforms: There has been a huge purchase, $32,000 worth, of United Parcel Service(UPS) uniforms on eBay over the last 30 days. This could represent a serious threat as bogus drivers (terrorists) can drop off anything toanyone

with deadly consequences! If you have ANY questions when a UPS driver appears at your door, they should be able to furnish VALID I.D Additionally, if someone in a UPS uniform comes to make a drop off or pick up, make absolutely sure they are driving a UPS truck. UPS doesn't make deliveries or pickups in anything, except a company vehicle If you have a problem, IMMEDIATELY call your local law enforcement agency right away!

TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY! Tell everyone in your office, your family, your friends, etc. Make people aware so that we can prepare and/or avoid terrorist attacks on our people! Thank you for your time in reviewing this and PLEASE send to EVERYONE on your list, even if they are friend or foe.

We should all be aware!

Kimberly Bush-Carr
Management Program Specialist
U.S. Department of Homeland Security
Bureau Customs and Border Protection
Washington, DC 20229

Truth:

This hoax is currently enjoying a new lease on life. The hoax began circulating in early 2003 and has spawned a number of variations, all equally untrue.

Some versions, including the example below, add a signature that supposedly belongs to Kimberly Bush-Carr of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. However, these emails did not originate from a government department. The inclusion of an official looking signature is simply a ruse to add credence to the message's spurious claims.

There are several slightly different versions of the UPS Uniform hoax, all referring to large purchases of United Parcel Service uniforms on eBay. However, there have been no reports of large eBay purchases of UPS uniforms, nor have large quantities of uniforms been reported stolen. According to a Washington Post article both eBay and UPS deny the rumour. Investigations by the FBI have debunked the stories of stolen uniforms as nothing more than urban legends. The article also notes that eBay "has barred sales listings of UPS or any other contemporary delivery service uniforms, including airline uniforms".

In a world increasingly concerned with the threat of terrorism, it is not surprising that false alerts like this one are taken seriously and spread so widely.

Too many UPS uniforms is a post from: Silly Hoaxes

Every baby born in-flight is given free air travel by the airline for the rest of his life.
Truth:

According to longstanding rumor, a child born in-flight is awarded free air transport on that carrier for the rest of his days. This unwritten rule is whispered as the reason airlines restrict the travel plans of expectant women. After all, if you don't allow the ladies to fly when they're getting close to their time, you never need worry about providing lifetime passes to their kids, right?

For the record, there is no truth to this obligatory lifetime pass thing (although if you read down to the end you'll see some have been granted, each on a different foreign airline). So forget about suggesting a little trip to your spouse when the due date is imminent.

Trying to get to the bottom of this tale, in 1994 I wrote letters to ten airlines as well as Transport Canada. I heard back from five airlines: Canadian, KLM, Qantas, USAir and Delta.

This legend is not as widespread as other airline tales; personnel at some airlines were aware of it, while those working for other carriers had not previously encountered it. My experiences on a 1994 Air Canada flight were typical in this regard: While chatting with the flight attendants in the galley (okay, so I was there after another drink, it still counts as research), I discovered two of them had previously heard about this legend, but the other two had not.

What became clear in my dealings with the various airlines was that each of them had different rules regarding the combination of travel and pregnant women. Air Canada's restrictions require a telephone consultation between the expectant mother's doctor and one of their doctors about the physical condition of the potential

passenger. Air Canada has reserved the right to refuse passage to anyone it determines is a medical risk. USAir admitted to a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. Delta said it too has no restrictions regarding expectant mothers. Up to a woman's 35th week of pregnancy, Qantas requires a "fitness
to travel" certificate from her doctor. After the 35th week, a medical clearance is required from Qantas' Director of Medical Services. Canadian (now part of Air Canada) accepted expectant women without restriction up to the 32nd week of pregnancy. During the ninth month, pregnant women were still allowed to fly with Canadian if they could provide medical clearances from their doctors. "However, within seven days of the expected date of delivery, an expectant mother will only be carried as a 'Medevac', accompanied by a qualified attendant," that company said.

I believe the origin of the "lifetime pass" legend came about as a fanciful explanation for why some airlines refuse passage to expectant women. It's typical urban legend stuff in that the "powers that be" have the right to restrict Jane Doe's travel plans; therefore, there has to be something else at work here besides concern over the health of the mother and child or any airline's reluctance to deal with a medical emergency at 35,000 feet. Makes more of a story if you can say they don't want to pay out on the "baby born inflight" sweepstakes than to admit it's only reasonable prudence in light of a possible medical situation.

Ah, the joy of urban legends. That normal and reasonable regulations can be explained away by some far-fetched story.

Related stories: Though the regulation does not exist and airlines are under no obligation to reward inflight deliveries from the stork, at least a few high-flying babies have hit the jackpot. On 6 September 1995, Dararasami Thongcharoen surprised everyone by being born two months ahead of schedule on Thai Airway's flight 641. Dararasami (named for the Boeing 747 her mother was flying on when she gave birth — her name means 'Starlight' in English) is now considered a "daughter of Thai Airways." Airline president Thamnoon Wanglee announced that in addition to the special flying privileges, the girl would also receive an educational scholarship from the airline.

Mohd Aliff Mohd Fuad came into the world on an Asia Pacific Airlines flight on 23 May 1996. In recognition of his being the first baby born on that carrier (Asia Pacific began operations on 10 May 1996) and "first" events being viewed as especially lucky in that culture, the company has chosen to celebrate this fortuitous event by sponsoring the lad's education and providing him with free travel for life.

In October 2009, 31-year-old Liew Siaw Hsia went into labor and delivered a boy on an AirAsia flight between two Malaysian islands. The airline announced they would provide both mother and child with free travel on that carrier for life.

On a more earthbound note, Stephany Ann Marie Ehler was born aboard a commuter train in San Francisco on 21 July 1996. In recognition of her being the first baby born aboard a BART train in the 23-year history of the transit system, the line chose to grant her a lifetime pass for free rides on BART.

Baby flys for free is a post from: Silly Hoaxes

FDIC has officially named your bank a failed bank

You have received this message because you are a holder of a FDIC-insured bank account.

Recently FDIC has officially named the bank you have opened your account with as a failed bank, thus, taking control of its assets.

You need to visit the official FDIC website and perform the following steps to check your Deposit Insurance Coverage:

Truth:

In October 2009, Internet users began receiving e-mails purporting to have come from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the agency that insures deposits in U.S. bank accounts. These messages claimed that the recipients were holders of FDIC-insured bank accounts in failed banks and instructed them to click on a link to the FDIC web site in order download a file which would allow them to check their "Deposit Insurance Coverage."

However, the link embedded in the e-mail led not to the real FDIC web site, but to a spoof web site. Attempting to download the proffered file from that site could initiate the installation of malware on the user's computer (presumably to collect sensitive personal information):

The real FDIC put up an alert to warn consumers about this fraudulent mailing:

FDIC has officially named your bank a failed bank is a post from: Silly Hoaxes

Don't know if this is just a sick coincidence but.....

2007 - Chinese year of the Chicken - Bird Flu Pandemic devastates parts of Asia
2008 - Chinese year of the Horse - Equine Influenza decimates Australian racing
2009 - Chinese year of the Pig - Swine Flu Pandemic kills hundreds of pigs around the globe.

Has any one else noticed this?
It gets worse........
Next year......
2010 - Chinese year of the Cock - what could possibly go wrong?

Truth:

We love coincidences, and we find them especially fascinating — and even comforting or disquieting — when they seemingly indicate some predictive pattern to tragic events. Such is the case here, in an e-mailed item that purportedly demonstrates a correspondence between influenza outbreaks in recent years and Chinese astrological signs. We suspect it was written by someone with tongue planted firmly in cheek, but we've received enough inquiries about its validity to think its claims merit at least a semi-serious examination.

There doesn't appear to be much coincidence here, however. First off, even allowing for differences between the Chinese calendar and the Gregorian calendar, the year/outbreak pairings seem to be off:

• Asia has weathered a number of outbreaks of bird flu over the last several years, resulting in the deaths of millions of ducks and chickens (primarily through humans' killing the birds to stop the spread of the disease). These outbreaks began well before 2007, so singling out that year as the one during which the bird flu pandemic "devastated parts of Asia" appears to be a rather arbitrary designation.If we instead consider the effect of bird flu (also known as avian influenza or avian flu) on people, then we find that the first confirmed human death from bird flu occurred in 2003, that the avian flu outbreak gained prominence in 2004, and that confirmed human cases of (and deaths from) bird flu peaked in 2006 — all of which again makes the focus on 2007 seem more like a case of trying to make the data fit the pattern than vice-versa.
• An outbreak of equine flu prompted the temporarily shutdown of the Australian horse racing industry in August 2007 (not 2008).
• The (H1N1) virus behind the current swine flu outbreak among humans was circulating in pigs long before it jumped to humans in 2008-09. The overwhelming bulk of porcine deaths attributable to swine flu took place in 2009, when Egyptian authorities ordered that hundreds of thousands of pigs in that country be slaughtered in a misguided effort to stop the spread of he disease.

Regardless, since the Chinese astrological symbols referred to above also don't match the years given for them, no reasonable tinkering with dates allows for a remarkable correspondence between various types of influenza outbreaks and those symbols:

• The Chinese zodiac includes a Rooster; it has no separate sign for "Chicken" as claimed above. Moreover, the last Year of the Rooster fell in 2005 (not 2007) and doesn't correspond to the beginning or peak of any single recent bird flu outbreak that stands out above all others.
• The last Year of the Horse was 2002 (not 2008), several years earlier than the Australian equine flu outbreak of 2007.
• The most recent Year of the Pig occurred in 2007 (not 2009). The H1N1 virus was present in pigs well before then, and (as far as is currently known) it didn't make the jump to humans until at least the end of the following year.
• The year 2010 will usher in the Year in the Tiger, not the Year of the Cock (i.e., Rooster).

Flu outbreaks & Chinese astrology is a post from: Silly Hoaxes