{"id":17263,"date":"2010-10-25T20:00:45","date_gmt":"2010-10-26T00:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/?p=17263"},"modified":"2010-10-25T20:00:45","modified_gmt":"2010-10-26T00:00:45","slug":"credit-cards-and-skiing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.askmrcreditcard.com\/news\/credit-cards-and-skiing\/","title":{"rendered":"Credit Cards And Skiing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Loveland Ski Area opened last week, here in Colorado.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For the rest of the country, this news serves to whet your appetites for the upcoming ski season.\u00a0\u00a0 While technology has traditionally been the skier’s friend, the ski areas are increasingly deploying new systems that may not be customer friendly.<\/p>\n

Tracking Skiers, and their Credit Cards<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Denver Post had a story recently <\/a>about how ski areas are inserting Radio Frequency ID (RFID) chips in your ski passes.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The ski areas claim that this is a benefit to customers who will be able to learn how much skiing they did during the day.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 At best, the reason they are doing this is to track skiers so that they can gather statistics about where people are skiing.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The next step is to use this data for marketing.<\/p>\n

Where do credit cards come in?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 According to the article, “Any information the scanners acquire is to be kept separate from personal data \u2014 credit-card numbers, phone numbers, addresses \u2014 that are stored in resort point-of-sale databases.” <\/em>This is simply not true, as I discovered last year. <\/a>I was skiing at Breckenridge, using a lift ticket that was purchased for me as a gift.\u00a0\u00a0 Unknown to me, the RFID chip in my discount card was scanned as well as my purchased lift ticket.\u00a0\u00a0 Since the discount card was in my wallet, and it’s barcode was not scanned, I presumed that I would not be charged twice for my day of skiing.\u00a0\u00a0 Only after a chargeback was I able to fix the problem, but it left me with a very sour attitude towards using RFID scanners that are linked to your credit card.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the article does point out some ways to disable the chip.\u00a0\u00a0 These solutions range from punching a hole in your pass to encasing it in a shielded housing.<\/p>\n

Why Non Skiers Should Be Concerned<\/strong><\/p>\n

I live in Colorado, so naturally skiing is an activity that I enjoy.\u00a0\u00a0 When you ski, you carry with you a ski ticket, not unlike many other activities such as visiting movies, amusement parks, and sporting events.\u00a0 How long will it be until there is an RFID chip in each of these tickets as well?\u00a0\u00a0 We can’t really expect the makers of this technology not to try to expand their market to other areas.\u00a0\u00a0 At first, customers will be told some story about how much more convenient it will be to link your credit card to your ticket.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Later they will attempt to show us the benefits of using our data to market products and services to us.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sure, the scanners might pick up our signal and charge us inadvertently, but isn’t that a small price to pay for these exciting benefits!?<\/p>\n

The next step is when they start using location data against us.\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe the computer determined that you skied down the beginner’s slope too fast?\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps the stadium determined that you weren’t sitting in the correct seat for a portion of the game?\u00a0\u00a0 I fear that this is the world we are headed for.<\/p>\n

My advice to you is to decline any offers to link your credit card to other passes or devices.\u00a0\u00a0 If you really need to purchase something, you should spend a couple seconds taking out your wallet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Loveland Ski Area opened last week, here in Colorado.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For the rest of the country, this news serves to whet your appetites for the upcoming ski season.\u00a0\u00a0 While technology has traditionally been the skier’s friend, the ski areas are increasingly deploying new systems that may not be customer friendly. 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