Originally Posted by bullfrog

Sorry this is a little OT, but I have to share.

I'm staying at the Hampton Inn at SNA tonight, and I saw something I probably haven't seen in 20 years... an impression machine! They actually take imprints of everyone's card at check-in (except for Gold and Diamonds.) But... they ALSO swipe (and the swipe is what's used to process the transaction.)

I asked the woman checking me in about this. She said they'd had cases of people using cards issued to them, in their name, and rewriting the mag stripe with stolen info. Seems really stupid to me, but she said that having the impression helped the police track down the crooks after the fact.

There are obviously numerous, better ways to handle this, but I was amused to see the old impression machine (it was one of the old, blue automatic amex machines that were commonplace back in the 80s.)