Experts Alert Travelers Against Sharing Photos of Boarding Passes Online

After giving hours to work – each day, every week, for months – checking in at the airport possibly represents an exciting time, for travelers who have waited long for the much-needed rest and recreation.

One may also want to capture this moment and share a sneak peek of their journey with their pals, starting with clicking a little picture of their boarding pass to post on social media. However, cyber experts have advised the vacationers against this, since doing so could be a risk to their privacy, or even lead to their information getting into the wrong hands. 

While modern boarding passes do not contain any outright personal details and only contain information like the person’s name, flight number and seat number, certain codes could be used by a hacker to further get hold of a victim’s information.

Josh Amishav, Founder and CEO of data breach monitoring company Breachsense, explained "Your frequent flyer number, name, and passenger name record are valuable for identity theft, enabling fraud like opening credit card accounts or making unauthorised purchases.”

"Hackers can employ social engineering techniques, pretending to be airline representatives to trick you into revealing more personal data. They can also create targeted phishing attempts using your boarding pass info, leading to clicking on malicious links or sharing sensitive data," he says.

The threat does not end here, since this is not the only way a boarding pass can be used by an unauthorized body to access a flyer’s information. Another case that comes to light is the illicit usage of contents of a lost or stolen boarding pass.

Thus, there are several measures and precautions one must keep in mind in order to protect oneself from falling prey to such cyber incidents. Here, we are listing some of those measures: 

• Always make sure that the boarding pass is safe with you; never put it in the pocket of the airplane seat or toss it in a hotel trash can without first shredding it up. 

• It is crucial to properly dispose of printed boarding passes when one is done with them and no longer needs them in order to prevent the information contents from falling into the wrong hands.

• In case one is posting picture of their boarding passes, or any documents from their trip on social media, it is recommended to edit those pictures in a way so it does not display any important detail.