It is the usual habit for any air traveler to throw away the boarding pass of their flight. This article is just to highlight the secret information hidden in the boarding pass and the necessity to shred it before disposing it, instead of crumpling it and throwing it away. There is plenty of information on the boarding pass that others with malicious intent can use for their own benefits. Let’s see what all it contains and why you should not simply throw it away without shredding or tearing it properly. Though they look innocent, they contain a good amount of information that others may use for their gains.
In short, the information on most of the airlines’ boarding passes may contains the following:
- Name of the passenger
- Phone number of the passenger
- Email address of the passenger- if you had booked online
- Frequent flier number of the passenger
- Information about all future flights reserved by the passenger from that account
- Linked access to email accounts
- Linked access to card details or financial accounts- if booked the ticket online.
- Your connecting flight information.
Thus, if a criminal wants, she or he can collect the data, use social engineering or phishing to get more data and use all of it for a fraud.
Also there is another school of thought that it is not as harmful as one thinks. Anyway it seems to be better to tear it in such a way that the barcode is not recognizable, before throwing it.
