Uber Hotel Security

Scott Manning
June 22, 2006 | Comments (2)

On one of my many business trips this year, I found myself outside my hotel room without my key.

It's easier to do than you think. With the electronic cards every hotel uses nowadays, they're very easy to leave in your wallet or pants. You walk out to get some ice and whoops!

Calm and collected, I walked up to the front desk and told them I had locked myself out of my room. The desk lady asked me my room number.

"325", I replied.

She took a new card, stuck it in the electronic thing, and handed it to me. "Here you go," she said with a smile.

Realizing how easy it was to get a key to my room with no identification and zero questions asked, I have started locking the bolt and throwing the latch in order to sleep soundly at night.

What if I was Al Qaeda? The horror. The horror.

Comments (2):

1) Posted by: Celtic Templar
June 30, 2006 10:40 AM

Social engineering - it's contrary to the service desk's mission in life to deny people service. It's a shame really, but you should have talked with her about it. In the words of one of our greatest presidents, Trust, but Verify - RR.

2) Posted by: David Emberton
July 24, 2006 10:13 AM

I think the greater point here is that the hotel is really not very interested in you as a guest... they just see their property and its occupancy rate, and *maybe* customer satisfaction figures. Good luck getting treated like anything more than faceless traffic, especially at a chain. Even if a terrorist did for some reason want a dupe of your room key, you're staying in the equivalent of economy-economy class, nobody cares.