Ever wonder what is on your magnetic key card?
Answer:

a. Customer's name
b. Customer's partial home address
c. Hotel room number
d. Check-in date and out dates
e. Customer's 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!

You can also use a small magnet and pass it across the magnetic strip
several times. Then try it in the door, if it does not work it erases
everything on the card.

Information courtesy of: Pasadena Police Department

Wow I didn't know that haha, I've always turned them in geez...

Thanks for the info!

I didn't know that Thank you for the info.

Oh wow! Thanks for the tip, Davinci!

Now I know

Very enlightening Davinci,

if I ever go away again, I'll be wised up.

Thank you.

and all I ever took was the towels..haha

You probbly paid for them! lol