A simple reminder for travelers:

Always take a small magnet on your holiday, they come in handy at the end. Just in case, you never thought about key cards containing anything other than an access code for your room

Hotel Key Card

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 by using a scanning device,  he/she can 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 reissues 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 as a souvenir, or destroy them. Never leave them behind in the room or room wastebasket, and do not turn them into 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.

If you have a small magnet, pass it across the magnetic strip several times. Then try it out on the door, it will not work. A magnet erases everything on the card.

Information courtesy of:  Metropolitan Police Service.

At the northern end of Oberursel, where Hohemarkstrasse and the U3 train tracks both reach  their final destination point, a new project is in the making.

Located superbly at the Tor zum Taunus (gate to the Taunus mountains), the city of Oberursel is building an Information Center. The project, estimated at a cost of 2.7 million euro, started on 17 May 2010 and aims at becoming the new information gateway for tourists and residents alike.

Next to providing a multimedia exhibition, the center will also house a seminar room and a restaurant. In addition, there is a discussion on whether to have electric bicycles available to make the mountain destinations more accessible.

For more about the location, visit Hohemark on Googlemaps.