Hi Everyone,

I'm a Canadian - Yesterday my wife and I rented a car from Budget at LAS. In order to rent the car, the clerk photocopied my passport, as well as the front and back of my driver's license and credit card. We didn't really have an option - If we said "no" they wouldn't have given us a car. The photocopies then seemed to just get put in a filing cabinet.

However, this struck me as a huge privacy / identity theft hole. If some unscrupulous clerk got their hands on these loosely-filed photocopies they could have a field day with passport, credit-card and driver's license data.

Is this legal? Do Nevada / Federal privacy laws allow a business to collect and (poorly store) this information? They claimed it was required to help them retrieve 'stolen' cars. I would have rather given then a $5000 deposit on my card and got it back when I returned the car (as opposed to allowing copies of these documents), but that wasn't even an option - They said let us make the copies or no dice.

Just curious on what your laws allow.

Cheers,
Geoff Glave
Vancouver, Canada