Apparently You Should Never Throw Away Your Boarding Pass. The Reason? I Had No Idea!

When it comes to trending news, just about everyone in the world is staying abreast of airlines and what these companies are doing to either appease or enrage their customers. Some of the biggest and most trusted companies are currently caught in the middle of PR nightmares. New videos, snapchats, Tweets and Facebook posts have been springing up daily that discuss the often surprising behaviors of commercial airlines and their employees. Whether passengers are being violently dragged off of overbooked flights or generously awarded for letting someone board ahead of them, the PR stunts of these companies are some of the biggest trends in news right now. Among some of the other hot topics in trending news are the various ways in which unscrupulous parties are using encrypted or digital data to steal personal information, plot scams or simply take advantage of unsuspecting consumers. This type of unethical behavior is by no means new, but there are new ways in which boarding pass data is being collected and misused. This is vital to keep in mind whenever you travel by air. Once you've printed out a new boarding pass, you probably hold it as close as you possibly can. That is, right up until you actually board your plane. Then, however, most people have no idea where their boarding passes go. They might stuff these in magazines, ball them up and toss them in the trash, use them as portable coasters for their on-flight drinks, or jam them in the back pockets sewn into the airplane seats just ahead of them. According to recent, trending news, however, this is one of the surest ways to compromise your personal identity. As per "Krebs on Security", boarding passes have long held encrypted, personal details about the passenger.

One of the new trends in personal identity scams is to take quick snapshots of these bar codes. The encrypted data that they contain can then be obtained by feeding the bar code image into a special online reader. According to some experts, this technology is neither new nor unknown. In fact, it's being used by unethical parties to obtain key details about airline passengers such as their home phone numbers, their email addresses and even their physical addresses among many other things. Each time you book a new flight, the details that you provide to the airline become a part of your boarding pass bar code. Thus, the absolute best way to protect your personal information when flying is to always treat a new boarding pass like it's incredibly important. Rather than simply balling it up and tossing it out, make sure to shred it or to dispose of it in some other way that ensures that no unscrupulous parties can access your private details. One of the most important things to note about this trending news is that not only does it reveal a potential scam, but it also tells unethical parties exactly how to run this scam, including which websites support easy-access bar code readers. Thus, even if this is new information to a scam artist, all he or she needs is the details collected from trending news in order to successfully pull this one off. That very fact is excellent incentive to hold your new boarding passes close.

Passenger scuffles with airline employees are not new developments in the least. They are, however, making headlines as part of the latest and most interesting developments in trending news. While everyone is busy following the latest trends in commercial airline behaviors, be sure to late your friends know about this latest scam. If everyone safely guards the encrypted information that's clearly printed on their new boarding passes, no one will have to worry about the theft of these highly confidential details.