Tag Archives: Tracking

Hospitality Industry Liability Solutions: Hotel “Room Safe Online Tracking” Can Mitigate Guest Personal Property Loss

“…Tracking (room safe contents) is important because it can be a potential liability issue for hotels…“A guest might say, ‘But I left $1,000 in Hotel Room Safe Liabilitythere, and you only found $20!’”… Hotels can mitigate this issue by asking guests if they have left anything in the room safe before they leave the hotel…At the same time, it can be possible for safes to offer online tracking more easily by plugging into an online tracking system a hotel already has, such as for an emergency management system…”

Online tracking can ease the checkout process by making it less likely that a guest will leave a personal item in the room safe, said Bill Oliver, president for North America, VingCard Elsafe. Front-desk staff can prevent items from being left in the safe by merely querying departing guests at check-out.

Online tracking for hotel safes may not be a fit for smaller properties due to the cost involved in setting up the system, said John Foley, VP of sales at Safemark.

Larger properties can make better use of online tracking because of the sheer number of guests using safes each day, Foley said.

“At a property the size of MGM Grand in Las Vegas, you might have 60 guest openings or 100 service calls a day, so big box properties just have different ways of tracking different products inside the guestroom,” he said.

For more:  http://www.hotelmanagement.net/technology/tracking-safes-online-25340

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Filed under Guest Issues, Liability, Management And Ownership, Risk Management, Technology, Theft

Hospitality Industry Privacy Risks: Mobile Phone Carriers Confirm That Mobile Devices "Integrate Tracking Software" That Reveals User's Location

“…AT&T, Sprint, HTC, and Samsung today confirmed that their mobile phones integrate a controversial piece of tracking software from a company called Carrier IQ..”

“…the software can be tweaked to gather more intrusive data about a user’s location, the software and applications on the device, which keys are being pressed and what applications are in use…”

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T17XQI_AYNo]

Both wireless carriers AT&T and Sprint insisted that the software is being used solely to improve wireless network performance while phone makers HTC and Samsung said they were integrating the software into their handsets only because their carrier customers were asking for it.

Meanwhile, several large carriers and handset makers, including Verizon, Research In Motion, and Nokia, distanced themselves from the software and insisted that reports about their devices integrating the tool are false.

The controversy began last week when independent security researcher Trevor Eckhart published a report disclosing how Carrier IQ’s software could be used by carriers and device makers to conduct surreptitious and highly intrusive tracking of Android and other smartphone users.

Eckhart described the software as a hard-to-detect and equally hard-to-remove rootkit that could be used by carriers and phone makers to collect almost any kind of data from a mobile phone without the user’s knowledge. Eckhart said his research showed that Carrier IQ’s software was often enabled to run by default on several mobile devices including those from Samsung, HTC, RIM, and others.

A lot of the information collected by Carrier IQ is designed to enable mobile operators and device vendors to quickly identify and address quality and service-related issues.

For more:  http://www.macworld.com/article/163982/2011/12/atandt_sprint_confirm_use_of_carrier_iq_tracking_software_on_mobile_phones.html

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Filed under Guest Issues, Liability, Management And Ownership, Privacy, Risk Management, Technology