Magnetic stripe keycard being inserted into door lock
Recently, we have received a number of emails claiming that the magnetic key card used by some hotels contain personal information such as: the customer’s name, their address, hotel room number, check in and check out dates, the customer’s credit card number and expiry date! Furthermore, the emails claim that the information can be easily accessed by any hotel employee or anyone with a freely available mag stripe reader. As far as we have been able to ascertain, this is not true.
On the other hand, the cards used by the MACH® system are not the magnetic stripe variety. We use cards incorporating RFID technology. The only information on our cards is a serial number and even that is securely encrypted. So, should someone gain access to one of our cards, and also to a specialised RFID reader, they still would not be able to gain any personal information at all.
Of course using RFID technology also means that there is no magnetic stripe to wear out or become damaged through constant swiping. The technology is not susceptible to being wiped clean by magnetic fields and our system is full compatible with the new Near Field Communication (NFC) standards being incorporated into the latest mobile phone handsets.