Yeap, next time you might want to consider shredding it instead of leaving it in the plane or just casually throw away.
and no more “Yay our vacation start” kind of photo using the boarding pass either…
What I am talking about is a recent event that showed that innocent looking barcode on the boarding pass can reveal too many personal and flight information and in fact very vulnarable to be misused in hands of you know people with bad intentions.
It all started with one curious person named Cory, decided to explore what information he can get from a boarding pass picture his friend put up on Facebook. He didn’t even tried too hard as he quickly find a site that can read the QR barcode data online. Instantly he had access to his friend’s name, frequent flier number and other personal information. In his words;
“Besides his name, frequent flyer number and other [personally identifiable information], I was able to get his record locator (a.k.a. “record key” for the Lufthansa flight he was taking that day,” Cory said. “I then proceeded to Lufthansa’s website and using his last name (which was encoded in the barcode) and the record locator was able to get access to his entire account. Not only could I see this one flight, but I could see ANY future flights that were booked to his frequent flyer number from the Star Alliance.”
“Ok so what” you can say, but this means Cory now can see his friend’s all future flights tied to that frequent flyer account, change seats for the ticketed passengers, and even cancel any future flights. He can actually use all this info to change the pin code of the account as well.
I know it sounds dreadful not even being able to peacefully enjoy a stranger’s like on your boarding pass to Hawaii picture on instagram fearing your hard earned mile points might be in danger but after these news it doesn’t hurts to care a bit.