The Snitch: Airline Boarding Passes

The holiday season is fast approaching. Soon you maybe buying a plane ticket to see far flung relatives. That airline boarding pass is the ticket to get where you are going. And that boarding pass also knows a lot about you.

Airline boarding passes are a wealth of information about the passenger and in the wrong hands it can be a nightmare personal data loss. A first glance you will notice your name departure and destination information, flight number and seat assignment. Other information includes your frequent flyer account number. And in case you haven’t heard there are plenty scams that target frequent flyers and their cherished miles or points.

Cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab have spotted phishing scams that access frequent flyer accounts of airlines in order to steal the frequent flyer miles. 

Criminals have distributed emails that entice airline customers with either prizes or more points in customers’ frequent flyer account. Victims are asked to enter their login information on a fake website. Once the hacker has their user name and password the miles or points are quickly stolen.  

A lot of information on that boarding pass is encoded. You will see a lot of numbers and barcodes. But it is fairy easy for a determined criminal to decipher those numbers and alphabets and even read the bar codes. There is a website dedicated to reading barcodes that can easily decipher that information.  According to Krebsonsecurity.com a boarding pass can reveal a lot more than most people realize.

Even if you are not a frequent flyer your name or maybe you email address or phone number are valuable information for a criminal. So once the trip is over do yourself a favor and destroy that boarding pass by shredding it or any method to make the data un-recoverable.

Now you know