It’s been a couple of years, but every once in a while, a slew of online entities will post warnings about printing out your boarding pass in favor of using electronic methods. I read the articles because although Joe prefers to have his boarding pass on his phone, I am still on team “Print It Out And Have A Hard Copy With You, Just In Case”.
Anyway, reading the posts, I discovered that the issue isn’t whether or not you print out your boarding pass. It’s what you do with it after you’re done with it.
The actual issue
Forbes wrote that if you leave your boarding pass on the plane, or throw it out in the garbage can of your hotel room later on, you’re at risk of someone taking it. If whoever takes it has the right know-how, they could easily hack into your account. After all, it really doesn’t take a whole lot of knowledge to learn what all those letters and numbers on your boarding pass mean. That’s why we warned people quite a while ago why they should hold onto their boarding passes until they can dispose of them properly.
What to do (and not do)
While discussing boarding pass safety, remember that you should never take a photo of your boarding pass and post it online. Whether it’s on Facebook, Instagram, a blog or whatever, you don’t want to put it out there where the whole world can potentially see it (here’s some more information about that).
Another thing recommended in the Forbes article that I 100% agree with is having two-factor authentication (2FA) set up on your frequent flyer account(s). That way, even if a hacker has your name and figured out your password (or how to bypass it), you’ll still have to be contacted, oftentimes by typing a code that’s sent to your cell phone, before anything can be done to/with your account.
So yeah – print your boarding pass if you want. I know I still will (probably much to Joe’s chagrin). It’s just what you do with the hard copy when you’re done with it that you have to be concerned about. That’s what those social media posts really mean.
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2 comments
I’m consireded frequent flyer, 60 to 80 boarding passes per year (mostly in Europe).
At boarding gate, when there is an incident, a delay, a need to try 2 or 3 times – anytime it slows down boarding – it’s due to electronic boarding passes.
A paper didn’t swap app, dont have a broken screen, don’t have such bad quality that OCR reader struggle with it, never ran out of battery, is never stolen, never fall on the ground (or in the toilets) and broke, never have a broken display, is always at right size (A4 or Letter size)…
In one word it just WORK. That’s not always the case – or not directly – with electronic version…
Same thing with your checked luggage tags. They have your name, PNR, and flight number.
I always keep mine (when checking luggage) and then shred them.
Also shred printed board passes