Getty ImagesHe inserted his key card into the reader on his hotel room door, tried turning the handle, and when nothing happened, he realized what he’d done.
Stephen Murdoch, a security researcher at University College London, has long been careful not to put tickets or cards with magnetic stripes in his pocket next to his smartphone, because the magnets in smartphones can be strong enough to wipe out the data on the magnetic stripe.
But so-called magnetic stripe hotel key cards are rare today and are being replaced by contactless cards containing radio frequency identification (RFID) chips.
They therefore conclude that during a visit to the hotel in January this year, Professor Murdoch forgot to take precautions and wiped down the room key after only using it once.
“I should have known better. This is what I know,” he says. When he returned to the reception desk, he realized he was not alone.
“There was a line of people with the exact same problems as me,” he recalls.
The magnetic stripe was invented in the 1960s by an IBM engineer, and it was his wife who suggested using an iron to melt the strip of magnetic tape onto the card, a process she was largely responsible for.
In the decades since, magnetic stripes have been used on bank cards, train tickets, identity cards, and even cards containing medical information to configure hospital machines.
But those murky brown bits of plastic, often made with heavy metal pollutants, may not be around for much longer.
For example, starting this year, Mastercard will no longer require banks to put magnetic stripes on debit and credit cards.
When it comes to ticketing, it is believed that new technologies such as printable barcodes and reusable contactless cards have the potential to be greener and more convenient.
Also, if you accidentally bring it close to your iPhone, you won’t be able to wipe it.
Broadly speaking, there are two types of magnetic stripes: HiCo and LoCo. The latter are cheaper but less durable and more susceptible to interference from magnets, says Lee Minter, global operations manager at Nagels, a manufacturer of magnetic stripe tickets and other products that recently investigated customer reports of multiple damaged magnetic stripe tickets after they were purchased.
Minter isn’t 100% sure, but his colleagues suspect some of the circular magnets inside customers’ iPhones may be the culprit.
“It matched exactly with the area I had wiped down,” he said.
In response, Apple said: “Smartphones and other products contain magnets or components that may be at risk of demagnetizing low-coercivity cards. To prevent this, users should store these cards separately.”
NagelsAlthough such confusions are relatively rare, magnetic stripes are declining in popularity anyway, Mr. Minter said: Of the 5 billion tickets Nagels prints each year, he estimates that fewer than a fifth have magnetic stripes.
Minter highlights the potential of receipt-like, thermally printed paper tickets, currently being trialled at several train stations around the UK, which have a QR code that can be used by turnstile scanners, and another code on the back to prevent counterfeit tickets.
Stuart Taylor, commercial development director at train operator Northern, says 70% of his company’s customers now buy digital tickets and the company could phase out the familiar orange-bordered, magnetic-stripe version in just five years’ time.
“The environmental benefits are clear,” Taylor says. “Times have changed.”
Northern is currently testing a replacement, thermal paper tickets made by Nagels, which had some issues with printers jamming and tickets getting stuck in the machines, but Taylor said those issues have been largely resolved.
He stressed there are no plans to eliminate paper tickets or cut ticket sales staff.
NorthAre there any benefits to having a magnetic stripe card or token?
“No,” says Sue Walnutt, product director for intelligent transportation systems at Vix Technology, bluntly.
She argues that there are now so many different ways to authenticate train tickets – QR codes displayed on mobile phone screens, tickets printed at home, and pre-paid contactless cards – that the need to retain magnetic stripe technology is less than ever.
But magnetic stripe tickets and admission cards fit conveniently into the credit card compartment of a wallet or purse. The new paper tickets Northern and other railroads are testing are much larger. “They’re cumbersome and difficult to handle,” Walnut said.
Magnetic stripes have lasted so long in part because they are relatively cheap and the specifications for readers were established decades ago, says Stephen Cranfield of Barnes International, a company that makes magnetic stripe testing equipment.
“You could take a card from today and use it in a magnetic stripe reader from 1970 and it would still be readable,” he says.
His company has worked on a variety of systems, including one designed to allow kidney failure patients to use magnetic stripe cards to set up their dialysis machines.
While dark brown or black magnetic stripes are ubiquitous, they actually come in a variety of colors — “gold stripes are actually quite popular in China,” Cranfield explains.
But now that U.S. banks have finally switched to chip-and-PIN cards, the market for magnetic stripes is clearly shrinking.
Murdoch said that while magnetic stripe technology is extremely well established, it is “inevitable” that it will gradually disappear. One drawback, he noted, is that magnetic stripe failures and fraud are now better understood. Newer technologies are theoretically more secure, but may also be more complex, which could give criminals new ways to exploit them.
Professor Murdoch is sometimes approached by members of the public who find it difficult to prove to their banks that they have been the victims of fraud.
“If the transaction was made on a magnetic stripe, it would be very easy for someone to claim that they copied it,” says Professor Murdoch, noting the irony. “But if the transaction was made in one of the more secure ways, it would be much harder.”
