Originally Posted by andrewk829

Yesterday, upon deplaning, I noticed that my seat neighbor left his paper boarding pass on his seat. It is not uncommon to come across discarded boarding passes on aircraft or in airports.

A boarding pass provides the passenger's name, record locator, and ticket number. On Delta.com, it is possible to access and modify an itinerary with this information; one need not login to a SkyMiles account to access itineraries. It occurred to me that someone who wanted to make mischief could use a discarded boarding pass to access an itinerary that has flight segments remaining on it, and mess around. Such a prankster could, for example, change a passenger's seat assignments, or even change or cancel a flight if the terms of the ticket allowed it. My experience yesterday was in the F cabin, and this passenger's boarding pass indicated he was a no-status passenger with a Z-class ticket (I couldn't help but have a quick look at it . . . before crumpling it up and tossing it in a waste bin after I deplaned).

I am kind of surprised that this is possible in the year 2022 . . . one would think that accessing an airline itinerary would require an additional level of security, such as, perhaps, last four digits of credit card number used to buy the ticket, numerical portion of traveler's home address, or something.

Anyway, I would highly suggest that those who are still choosing to use paper boarding passes ensure that they dispose of them in a secure fashion.