Clever Scam - I Want to Garner Some Publicity For It

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Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 2:50 pm

While perusing snopes.com, I came across this scam that I had never heard of. It sounds like it could be very successful at hotels that have lax security on incoming calls. http://www.snopes.com/fraud/phishing/hotel.asp

Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 3:25 pm

Yikes! I could see people falling for it.

Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 7:16 pm

That's .. awful.

Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 8:02 pm

Posted: Sat May 29, 2010 8:18 pm

Well it is good that this warning is now out there. I probably would have fallen for this too. But now it just reminds me to be that much more paranoid.

If I do find myself in a hotel and get such a call, I will at least have a little fun and say that I will be down at the front desk in 5 minutes to 'reconfirm' the digits on the card, and keep insisting that I will reconfirm in person only, just so I can hear the frustration on the other end. heehee. Twisted Evil

Posted: Sun May 30, 2010 6:50 am

I might be missing the point here but isn't snopes.com about stuff that isn't a scam? Stuff that is a "urban legend" etc.

Some ejit in my organisation did a global mail recently about the dangers of what information is held on hotel key cards and how this represented a security risk Rolling Eyes

30 seconds on Google would have given them the link to a load of information here

Posted: Sun May 30, 2010 8:53 am

Snopes publishes Internet rumours. If it didn't publish true claims (labelled as true), it would appear that Snopes hadn't heard of them.
This one isn't labelled, but the article does suggest that hotels won't put a call though if all the caller doesn't know the name of the person in a room.
The advice is good though. Never give your credit card details to someone who calls you.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 41

I used to manage a hotel - we never rang up to a room with just a room number. Besides this scam, which has been around for a long time, there was always the issue of crank calls and psychos who had nothing better to do than harass hotel guests. Rolling Eyes

I have also patiently explained to some guests that they were idiots and there wasn't anything stored on a guest room key card that would compromise their identity.

Master Baiter Joined: 23 Apr 2010 Posts: 160

Whether it's a rumour or urban legend or not, I can see how this would actually work for smaller hotels. I'm just hoping and assuming larger chains of hotels wouldn't allow this Smile

It's a phone-based variety of your bank sending you an email requesting your logon data for verification purposes..

Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 2:30 pm

Heh I saw this on the British show "The Real Hustle" a while back

Link to vid of them apparently doing the scam:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzO-fYva1Gw

Posted: Mon May 31, 2010 3:20 pm

If 'Reception' is having a problem verifying your card number, the onus is on them to identify themselves - in short get them to tell you the info you gave on check in (your address, maybe)...

The party that initiates the conversation bears the burden of proof, same with 'Hello this is your bank calling', etc.

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