My white cane (blind) is the telescoping model. that scrunches down to a white baton about a foot long. After checking my bags at Houston airport, I was cooling it in the main concourse, and by and by, a security man wandered over and in a casual fashion pointed to it and said “Whats that?” I popped it open and displayed its workings, to his satisfaction. Only then did I notice that he had already called for backup, and I was surrounded by several other security personnel, breathing a collecctive sigh of relief.
Can confirm. I was a regular passenger on an Air Canada 747 into Kai Tak around 1996. I asked to sit in the jump seat for the approach & landing - no problem! The approach was flown manually very low over a densely populated city, if I were a crazy person or a terrorist I could probably have dumped the aircraft into the middle of Mongkok and killed thousands of people. Quite honestly, even then (pre 9/11, obviously) I thought it was pretty irresponsible of them to allow it.
But of course these security lapses are trivial compared to the security problems now common because of the internet. For example a major fuel pipeline on the East coast is currently shut down because of a ransomware attack:
Yup. Wisconsin was the (or at least one of the) last states to get a photo on it’s license. This is due to some horseshit Lynn Adelman maneuvered while he was in the state legislature. For some reason he liked that people were using other peoples licenses to drive.
The license was just a card with the state seal printed all over it. Reddish seals were for probationary licenses, blue seals for regular. Temps were just printed on pink colored paper.
We used to refer to that ID card (which were usually issued by the county register of deeds even though it was a state ID) as a “beer card” and later on as a “walkers license”. I hated those ID cards because they were bigger than what standard ID cards and drivers licenses are today and it didn’t fit right into many mens wallets.
One thing that’s changed in security is that it used to be easy to get a real ID. Just take an older friends or siblings birth certificate in and say it’s you and they’d give you an ID card. There were a lot of us in the 70’s that were only 15 or 16 that had ID cards saying we were over 18.
It was also easy to get a very good fake ID. Up until the early/mid 80’s when the feds cracked down there were companies selling fake state ID through the mail that looked identical to the real thing. There was a company in Florida named Uniphoto that sold ID cards so good that when placed next to the real thing one could not tell the difference. Had all the seals and embossments and everything. And that was back in the day before laser printers, digital photography, etc…
Where I work, they’ve solved this problem by installing revolving doors, though which only one person can enter at a time. If more than one person tries to squeeze in them, it’ll set off an alarm, and the door will stall.
When I turned 21, Pennsylvania was still issuing PA Liquor Control Board cards, which were used as ID when purchasing liquor. They were yellow cards encased in plastic, embossed with the state seal.
A tattoo artist friend got the yellow cardboard, sheets of the plastic, etc and figured out a way to bake the card on the oven under weights that made the embossed design. They were perfect! He was making them for people, making some cash, when the cards were discontinued.
Yep - we routinely get no-tailgating memos (not that this has been an issue for quite some time now, what with COVID and working from home). One time when I’d forgotten my badge and had to sign in and get a temporary one - of the peel-and-stick variety - someone actually checked me before letting me go in on his badge swipe, other times it was a non-issue, and I think seemed to somewhat expected by the guards. This would have been in the early 00’s (prior to 2008 when we moved to a different building). I did try to be somewhat dliligent, and on one occasion a woman was waiting to meet someone and really needed to use the restroom, so I walked to the restroom with her and waited outside until I could escort her back outside.
In one of the early Airport movies, there was a woman (played by Helen Hayes, I think) who made somewhat of a game of sneaking onto flights with an empty ticket envelope. I can believe it people managed that in real life.
My first Pennsylvania driver’s license, back in the mid 1970s, was a plain pasteboard thing with all my info printed on it. Harder to fake, back then, because of course people didn’t own the kinds of printers that would easily duplicate those, but still - no photo, so I could easily have loaned or borrowed one. It wasn’t until 1981 that my license had a photo (in NC - no clue when PA got them but it was certainly after that). I also, at one point, had 3 valid PA licenses in my wallet: my junior license - also known as a Cinderalla license as you weren’t allowed to drive after midnight except for work or for family emergencies (and valid through the end of the month I turned 18), my provisional senior license issued at age 17 and valid until the end of the month I turned 18, and my permanent senior license, issued the month I turned 18 - so it overlapped the other two for about 3 weeks.
A fellow I knew from work managed to wind up in the wrong city this way - this would have been in the early 1990s. I forget where he wanted to go and where he went, but one of the destinations was in Kentucky and the other was most definitely NOT in Kentucky,
New York didn’t get them until -84. Truly ridiculous.
And it took longer than that for New York City to get cable television.
Sorta like this you mean 
:
I got my first paycheck in 1959. The teller asked if I wanted an account, handed me a signature car and said put your name and address on here and sign it. She came back a minute later with a printed card with my name and account number on it, and another business reply envelope in case I wanted to order checks. That was it.
Having recently opened a checking account at a new bank I can tell you that other than giving them my driver’s license number the procedure was identical to your 1959 procedure. And probably quicker. I was dealing with a website, not a human, but that’s just a matter of communication, not substance.
I should not be surprised that so many security holes still exist to this day. My just told me about another highly educated employee where she works who opened a phishing email, clicked on a link, and opened the door to a malware parade. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make them stop clicking on links in emails.
Do hotels and resorts still let you assign restaurant and bar charges to your room by just telling the server your room number? When that was more common, how was it not constantly exploited?
When I was very young and traveling with most of the company to trade shows, I was warned against letting everyone know which room I was in, or else they’d charge everyone’s bar tab against my room. But they may have been kidding about doing this.
Someone who works in hotels can chime in, but I believe the practice is that they check your name (possibly ID) against the name assigned to your room. So if I am UltraVires staying in Room 220, and ask that my liquor be charged to Room 220, they at minimum ask my name and then pull up on the computer that UltraVires is indeed in Room 220. If I said just charge it to Room 244, then they would see that I wasn’t staying there.
ETA: It was exploited. I remember at hotels just signing your name, getting a key and then paying on the way out just like a restaurant. I don’t know if people were more decent back then or what, but that would be a disaster today.
It’s been a few years since I put anything on a room at a hotel (except for room service where they’re pretty sure what room you are in), but I don’t recall any double checking just based on room number recently. Long ago they sometimes wrote room numbers on the security card or little folder they put it in, and before that it the room number was embossed on the plastic fob that the old fashioned metal key was attached to. I recall a couple of times where I had to show my key to charge something to my room. Even if a desk clerk doesn’t stupidly write a room number of someone’s key card now I’m sure there are guest stupid enough to do that to remember their room number.
Again, this is just a WAG, but I assume they would do it discreetly. Shake your hand, ask your name, where you are from, how long you will be staying at Prestigious Resort, etc. and then discreetly check your name against the room number. Also, depending on the resort, they may have calculated that any money they lose to fraud is offset by giving their guests the convenience of being able to just say “put it on my room.” You certainly couldn’t do it at a Quality Inn.
We have annual, mandatory training on digital security, including avoiding phishing and the like. Our security group tests this from time to time, by sending out their own (non-malicious) phishing emails to the agency, and then reporting out the results – there’s always about 10-15% of people who fall for it, despite the training.
I’ll tell my wife about that. I’m sure they’ll see a higher percentage, as I noted, these people are highly educated.
I charge stuff to hotel rooms many times per month in the US and Latin America. In a variety of brands of mid- to upper-midmarket places. Pretty universally to make a room charge you must write your last name, room number, and signature on a computerized charge slip akin to the credit card charge slips we all recognize.
Which name and room number does get checked at least sometimes; once in awhile I goof my number since it’s different every night, and they come back and ask about the discrepancy.
For sure, I could write “Smith, room 123”, and an illegible squiggle and walk out of the restaurant before they check the computer. I could also walk out before they even bring me the bill. The “security” against dine-and-dash is pretty lax at most restaurants, whether or not connected to a hotel.
FWIW I’ve never had a charge appear on a room bill that wasn’t mine. I did get hit for 3 drinks once when I’d only bought two. But when they checked their records they realized it had been rung up as one, then both, rather than as one and one. So they reversed the mistake.
I’ve never seen any restaurant server ask for a room keycard or keycard envelope as a form of ID. I do know that in Las Vegas it’s universal that access to the pool areas requires showing your room key. Whether the valet (read “gate guard”) has a reader they can insert to validate that the key is live seems to vary from property to property.
In smaller facilities both Vegas and otherwise instead of a gate guard you’ve got the usual electronic lock where you need a current valid keycard to open the door to the pool deck or gym or business center or …