A trend has been noticed by a chief security officer at global threat intelligence firm IntSights, Etay Mayor. According to the Huffington Post, “he noticed a troubling trend: Passengers leaving their boarding passes behind on the plane.” Think about that statement and reflect back on the number of boarding passes we as passengers have left onboard…A lot. With this being the case, Mayor decided that it was the right time to inform frequent travelers of this mistake.

Prior to the announcement made by Mayor, many were unaware of the circumstances that one can incur when leaving a boarding pass for anyone to take. Reality is that the barcode scanner on a boarding pass has all of a passenger’s personal information encoded in it.

If someone gets ahold of the boarding pass and owns a barcode scanner they can retrieve all that information, right then and there. The scanners used at the airport to check one into their flight is the same exact one grocery stores use to ring out groceries, according to Huffington Post.

Now knowledgable of this information, it is important that one shares this with any frequent flyer they cross paths with because the likelihood of someone being aware of this hack is low.