A closer look
Magnetic stripe hotel key cards almost never contain your personal credit card data or home address, despite a widespread urban legend that insists hotel staff are secretly encoding your life history onto a cheap piece of plastic. The magnetic strip literally only has enough storage space to hold a basic string of data, specifically your room number, the date of your check-in, and the precise moment you are supposed to be kicked out of the room. This paranoid myth started circulating via early internet chain emails in the early two thousands and absolutely refuses to die, causing anxious tourists to aggressively snap their plastic cards in half before checking out of the lobby. You should be far less worried about international hackers stealing your identity from a plastic room key and much more concerned about the horrifying biological ecosystem currently thriving on the unwashed hotel television remote
