Never Toss Your Airline Boarding Pass

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MIAMI (CBSMiami) - Whether you use an app on your phone or print out your airline tickets, more often than not you get a boarding pass at the airport.

"Sometimes I keep it. Sometimes I throw it away," said 'Laura' as she passed through Miami International Airport.

That little piece of paper has more information than you may realize.

"All of them contain information. Some of them contain more information than others," said Michael Burgess, a cyberforensic consultant for ERM.

Burgess those barcodes on a boarding pass make it easy for a hacker to steal information.

"Some barcodes are just numbers. Some barcodes have people's names and flight record locators and all that," he said.

To demonstrate, Burgess pulled out his phone, opened up an app and scanned a boarding pass. A second later he smiled at the results.

"We've got a full name, the flight locator, where it's coming from, where it's going, the flight number and just lots of encrypted information," he said.

All that using a free app on his phone.

Record locators are used by airlines to keep track of your reservation and information.

"With the record locator you can do all kinds of interesting things with that. You can go on the websites and if you put that in you can find every piece of information about that flight and that person and anyone who's been, who paid for that flight as well," explained Burgess.

Not only is your personal information at risk, but the points or miles you use for travel.

"There is a field where I can just go in and put my own frequent flier mile and steal all that information or have all those miles if I wanted to." Burgess said.

Imagine you think you're racking up miles for future flights, when really you are piling on miles for someone else - a hacker.

Burgess tried his simple bar code hack on a number of boarding passes.

"Every single one of them had information that we could use to steal someone's information." he said.

When asked if this hack being done, he didn't hesitate in his reply.

"Oh I would bet people are doing this. Absolutely," he said.

And some people are making it easier than others.

Usamon Williams, a traveler, told CBS4 she has seen friends sharing their boarding passes online.

"I seen people take a photo of their boarding pass and post on Facebook." A quick search of social media found boarding pass after boarding pass posted online. A hacker wouldn't even have to leave their house.

Burgess says the boarding pass information is usually valid for up two days after your flight. He recommends you not be careless with it.

"Hold on to your information. Whether it's boarding passes or anything. Especially with boarding passes you can lose a lot of information," he said.

So the moral of the story is you probably should shred your boarding pass and definitely don't leave it out in public.