Beware the Barcode

According to a story on www.flyertalk.com, the barcode on your flight boarding pass may contain too much information about you and your travel plans. That means that instead of just throwing it away once your trip is over, you should shred it.

I haven't been flying enough lately to be a regular on Flyertalk, but this article caught my eye. Apparently some airlines encode sensitive information into the barcode, and people with ill intentions can retrieve the used boarding pass, scan the barcode into a certain Website and thereby possibly gain access to your frequent flyer accounts and travel plans.

Flyertalk is mainly a good source for those who are true travel junkies, people who take long flights just to rack up frequent flyer miles. But it is also worth checking from time to time for those of us who don't travel so often, because of interesting tidbits like the above.