酒店房门卡嵌有客人秘密？

　　希尔顿酒店的管理人员表示，他们从不将客人的个人信息记录到房门卡上，房门卡里仅有房间号和客人入住以及离开的时间，甚至连客人的名字都不包括在内。但是，随着高技术的日新月异，安全需求正在包括酒店在内的各个行业变得越来越高。 　　据一位曾经在80年代参与过后来得到广泛应用的电子房门卡门锁制造流程的业内人士透露，客人的信用卡号码或是其他个人信息并不会直接内嵌进房门卡里。但这位人士表示，在拉斯维加斯等地，酒店的房门卡门锁系统里会安有微芯片来存储客人入住和离开的时间。

　　当客人进入房间时，上述微芯片就会记录客人使用的是哪张房门卡以及客人在房间里呆的具体时间以及他们出入房间的频率。这些信息通常情况下会保留至少30天。

　　上述人士说：“这些是否侵犯了客人的隐私呢？酒店方面当然不会将这些信息公诸于众，但这意味着如果有酒店的员工或是其他人想抢劫某位客人，他们就可以以这些信息为做案依据。当然，另一方面，如果有客人谎称自己的物品被盗，酒店方面也可以通过检索其中的信息来确定是否有外人进入过客人的房间。”

　　To all friends of mine who recently heard me confidently stating that Smarty Jones is a gelding and therefore tragically out of the running for the stud fees that are the stuff of every champion thoroughbred owner's dreams: Sorry. Never mind.

　　Smarty Jones is not a gelding. He is a 3-year-old colt, happily destined for stallionhood and riches - and where I got the bad information from is anybody's guess. Now, Funny Cide, last year's also-ran in the last leg of the Triple Crown - he was a gelding. I know this because I looked it up.

　　Looking it up is what a pretty fair number of readers suggested I should have done in a column a few weeks ago in which I paraphrased a snippet of advice from "Hotel Secrets From the Travel Detective," an excellent new book by Peter Greenberg, who is the travel editor of the "Today" show on NBC. I wrote, "Hotel room key cards are often encoded with a guest's personal information, including credit card numbers and expiration dates, so don't leave them in your room or return them to the front desk when you check out."

　　In one of dozens of e-mail messages from readers objecting to the assertion, Bill Baron wrote, "I think Greenberg is wrong when he says that hotel room key cards are often encoded with a guest's personal information, including credit card numbers and expiration dates." Mr. Baron said the key card story was "a hard-to-eradicate urban legend" and referred me, as did many other readers , a Web site that catalogs and debunks urban legends and other intractable myths.

　　The hotel key card assertion is addressed at length, and largely debunked, in an entry on Snopes.com. The entry, in summary, says this: It is not true that personal information, like credit card numbers, is routinely encoded on hotel key cards. It is true that personal information could possibly be encoded on the cards.

　　That, Mr. Greenberg says, is just what he intended to convey. "On balance, it is an urban myth," he said. "But you need to put it in perspective: the black stripe on the back of key cards can easily be encoded, and is meant to be encoded." Most encoded information is simple: Name, room number and check-out date, he said. Some hotels, he added, have been known to encode more detailed information, "so my advice, which I maintain is still valid," is to keep or destroy the card when you check out, he said.

　　Hotel chains say flatly that they do not put personal guest information on key cards. "The only thing we have on our key cards is the room number and the dates that the person is going to occupy the room," said Kathy Shepard, a spokeswoman for the Hilton Hotels Corporation. "We don't even have the guest's name on them."

　　Technology moves fast, though, and security demand is growing more intense in every industry, including hotels. I spoke yesterday to Kenneth L. Teeters, an assistant professor who teaches hotel facilities management at the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

　　Mr. Teeters, who formerly worked as an engineer with the manufacturers who widely introduced electronic key card locks to the industry in the 1980's, said no credit card numbers or other such personal data were directly encoded on key cards in any system of which he was aware.

　　However, he added, in hotels in Las Vegas and elsewhere, the comings and goings of guests and hotel employees in any room are minutely recorded by a microprocessor in the door lock mechanism that is activated by the key card.

　　When someone enters a guest room, that microprocessor records what key was used to unlock the door plus "the exact time they were in that room, how long they stayed in that room, and the frequency they were in and out of that room." The record is usually kept for at least 30 days, he said.

　　"What this does is bring accountability into the formula," Mr. Teeters said. "We can download that information out of the microprocessor in the lock on the door. So if Joe Smith is in that room say, from 10 a.m. to 12 a.m., it will clearly show that."

　　He said: "Is that private information or not? We certainly don't put it out in the public domain, but it is admissible in a court of law."

　　That means, he said, if an employee were to rob Joe Smith's room, or if Joe Smith for some reason were to lie about being the victim of a burglar, electronic evidence can be retrieved about who was in the room and when.

　　"People might come to town, lose some money, and then make the claim that, 'Well, somebody stole my money; my room was burglarized,' " Mr. Teeters said. "We can access that lock to see, was anybody else really in the room, and when."

　　In Las Vegas, as they say, what happens here stays here. But in Las Vegas or anywhere else, it appears, the lock on your door, in cahoots with that key card in your pocket, may in fact know more than you suspect.