New Fun Blog – Scott Bilas

In a previous post I outlined my basic requirements for travelling securely. I’m going to hit the physical security first, as it’s lots simpler and a lot of common sense stuff. Plus, given the big constraint of mobility, there’s not a lot I can do physically anyway.

I’m following some simple ideas in trying to physically secure our stuff.

Keep the Backup Physically Separate

I use a cheap external USB drive for backups (more on this in the next post). When we’re staying someplace I don’t think is 100% secure, particularly a hotel or hostel, I always keep either the backup drive or my notebook with me, but never both. If someone gets into the room and snags one, the other is safe. Or if I get robbed or I accidentally drop my backpack in the ocean, the other back in the room is probably ok.

Because it’s so small, it’s really easy to keep the USB drive safe. So even when I’m going out and trying to stay super light, I’ll still grab it.

Even when I am physically in the hostel room, I’ll still separate the two at night, putting the notebook hidden under clothes and the drive under the bed or whatever. I’ve heard from friends a few stories of people managing to come into their rooms late at night to grab easy pickings. While the occupants were sleeping. Not much point in a backup if both can be grabbed together!

A good friend of mine staying in Costa Rica woke up to find some dude poking around in her kitchen. Past the locked door and the armed security guard. She puts her notebook in the oven to hide it.

So I am pretty careful about keeping these two things physically separate. We went to Cusco for a week, and I brought my notebook so I could work. The backup drive stayed at home (hidden) and I brought along a little 16GB stick to do micro-backups of just what I changed while I was away. It worked well. Luckily I didn’t need to use the backups.

Don’t Be (So) Obvious

Schoolyard psychology. Don’t look like you are a target and they’ll prefer someone who does. In most places I’m always going to look like a tourist no matter what I do, but I can aim away from techy bo-bo video game developer and towards grungy penniless backpacker. Well, somewhat. So…

Don’t use those stupid white earbuds that come with your iPod.

They announce “I have an iPod” around the world. Aside from their poor quality and fit (IMO), white color electronics = iPod = money = easy target. Just toss them and get some ordinary black ones. They sound better anyway.

Don’t pull out your mp3 player and flip through music on the street or bus.

This one is tough because the fancy “look ma no buttons” design that’s popular today prevents operating it in your pocket. I listen to audio books and podcasts all the time, and need to pause/resume a lot as I travel around in the city. A great way to do this surreptitiously is to get a tiny remote and keep the player safely out of sight. Very important: the remote is useful when snowboarding. Double score!

Mess up your junk a bit.

I have these awesome stickers all over my notebook. Part of the machine is even held together with tape. [Well! It’s over 3 years old, visited many places, and has been dropped a lot. Which is why I got a Built NY sleeve to protect it even better inside my backpack. Now I can drop it and not worry! Much!]

Does this really matter? I don’t know. My guess is that it announces “I’m a worn out piece of crap, go steal a pretty Mac instead”.

Anecdote: the first thing I did when I got my car stereo (back when I had a car) was scratch all the writing and logos off it. It was a removable faceplate but I never remembered to take the faceplate with me. The car was broken into twice and they left the stereo both times. The second time they even went away totally empty-handed. Now, the plural of anecdote is not data, but my “dirty stickers method” isn’t a bad idea…

I’d do the same with the bags. If you look like Rick Steves just stepped out of REI with shiny new gear, even the tourists will notice you. Although, if you have travelled much at all, your bags are already very unclean. I’m getting a lot of practice sewing to repair things, too.

Lock Your Backpack

Even if you wear your backpack in front instead of on your back, you can still get ripped off. All it takes is a couple of kids with a thick crowd around, good timing, a bit of misdirection. Even if you think you’re prepared, it could still happen. Just have to get distracted for a few moments.

It happened to me last weekend in fact, in the middle of a dense crowd in Carnaval in Oruro, Bolivia. One kid distracted me while the other mashed in with the crowd and unzipped a side pocket and stole a couple things. I wasn’t paying much attention because I didn’t think I had anything worth more than a few bucks in my outside pockets, and the rest were locked. Turns out I was wrong about what I had in the unlocked pockets. He got something totally worthless to him, but something it cost me a few hundred dollars and a lot of Peruvian import customs pain to replace. Expensive lesson.

I learned a couple things:

• Double check what’s in the vulnerable places and don’t put valuables there. Duh.
• Lock it all. Even if the kid gets away with a deck of cards and some Altoids, you still feel violated and have that momentary freakout when you realize your pocket is open and something (what exactly? what was it?) is now missing. Can really ruin a good mood.

Detour: I have to rave about my pack for a second. It’s a DaKine Mission snowboarding bag that doubles as a super awesome travel pack. DaKine has a lot of variations on the Mission, but this one is my favorite. Good design, built in straps for attaching a stuff bag or coat or whatever, and takes a beating. Most importantly, it comes in plaid!

Anyway, here’s my current strategy for securing my backpack.

• Wear it on the front when I get near a crowd. All the way on, not just one arm in. Yeah I know, even the locals do this, I should have taken it more seriously.
• Lock the zippers together with a padlock. I have a cheap TSA-compatible combo lock. Doesn’t have to be great quality.
  • Note: I don’t like the idea of a padlock hanging off my bag, I feel like it’s an advertisement that I’m keeping something valuable inside and may get more attention. So I usually push the padlock inside the tiny gap between the zipper pulls so it’s inside the bag and not easily visible.
• “Lock” remaining pockets closed using cheap key rings through the zipper pull and a loop that DaKine so nicely left sewed into the start of the zipper.
  • These obviously aren’t locks, but they require a lot of dexterity or a wire cutter to open. Unlikely to happen in a milling crowd.
• Don’t stand still for long, keep moving and turning.

What I’m mainly after is to slow someone down by 10 seconds. That ought to be enough to avoid most problems and not get into a confrontation.

This should also work on long bus rides. I keep my bag below my legs or under the seat, and sometimes doze off. If someone’s going to start going through my bag, it’s going to be obvious to the other folks on the bus what’s going on because they’ll have to really work at it to do anything.

It should even help when leaving a bag at a hostel temporarily (like in advance of running off to hike the Inca Trail). The places they keep bags for guests often aren’t very secure. Maybe secure enough to prevent someone grabbing a whole bag that’s not theirs, but perhaps not to prevent them from doing a quick rummage. A lock and a couple key rings will slow down the casual rummager.

What About A Mesh Wrap?

Ok, so what about those fancy wire backpack mesh wraps? I actually file those under “you’re being obvious”. I haven’t seen a whole lot of those on packs when travelling, but every time I do, it really grabs my attention. It seems to me that a wire mesh is a big shiny target and won’t be of much use if it attracts a group of guys who just take the whole backpack and deal with the mesh later. Plus, I’ve read that they’re heavy and hard to store.

One purpose of the mesh is to stop slashers – people who will slash your bag while it’s on your back and just snag what they can, ignoring any locks you may have on there. There are slash-resistant materials that some bags are made out of, but unfortunately they are all butt ugly. Oh well!

I don’t have a good solution for slashers except to (a) assume they are very rare compared to the ordinary pickpockets, and (b) put small but valuable stuff inside of other containers in the backpack, and secure those things to the inside of the backpack so they don’t just fall out the bottom when slashed. Well, that’s more work. So mainly I’m betting on (a).

I would like to see DaKine come out with a line of secure backpacks. Preferably based upon the (previously mentioned super awesome) Mission design. Make the outside material rip-stop or slash-resistant, figure out a way to secure the zippers easier… Sold! Again!

Lock Up At Home?

We never ended up worrying about this. Hostels and hotels in Peru and Bolivia are very safe, at least the places we’ve stayed. As well as our current apartment in Arequipa. They have all gone for perimeter security – big gates and buzzers, good locks, and so on, doesn’t seem to matter how expensive or cheap the place is. They’re all pretty well prepared. So we haven’t needed to worry.

But we did try to come prepared. We just haven’t used any of the stuff we brought:

• Big padlocks for lockers in hostels.
  • The idea here was to use lockers in hostels to store our valuables and then we could run off during the day to go do things and not worry.
  • Only problem is that we have yet to stay at a hostel in Peru that has lockers.
• A doorstop alarm, to prevent night-time visits like mentioned earlier.
  • This is a neat idea, and cheap too. But we just haven’t had a need for this so far.
  • Like I mentioned, all the places we’ve stayed have been very safe. Maybe because we’re avoiding party hostels!
• Kensington laptop security cables.
  • This won’t stop anybody from stealing a notebook, but it will force them to break it to get it and slow them way down.
  • Same deal as the doorstop alarm – very safe. Although I think a lot of it is laziness. I’m going to think on this some more.

So I’ve just been following the “keep the backup drive separate” model of security for at home.

Next Up

Data security! Way more interesting.

Posts in this series:

• Working Remotely
• Travelling Securely
• Keeping Physically Secure (current post)
• Keeping Portable Data Secure