Are You Helping Airport Thieves?
Are you unwittingly helping thieves at the airport? Some people are, according to the Flying with Fish blog.
Steven Frischling, author of the blog, travels frequently and writes about how to deal with security issues. In the blog post linked above, he points out how professional airport thieves stake out the baggage carousels at major holiday airports (e.g., Orlando) looking for potential targets. The information on your luggage tag could be all they need to know where to break into an empty house.
A while back have I sat in the United Airlines Red Carpet Club at New York’s JFK Airport to test my theory and using www.whitepages.com/reverse-lookup. Using the first bag someone placed next to me I searched the phone number on the bags to see what I could find out. What a shock, I immediately knew the home address of the guy next to me, as well as his wife’s name. Now I have no intention of breaking into anyone’s home, but by casual observation and listening I knew how easily the couple that owned the bags could become the targets of airport thieves. In the span of a few minutes I not only had the first & last names of the couple, but I knew they lived off of 188th Street in Queens, New York, a very nice upscale neighbourhood. I also knew the home would be unattended by listening to their conversation and they’d be out of town at least a day as they boarded United Flight 891 from JFK to Los Angeles’ LAX.
Frischling offers some simple and sound advice to protect yourself from theft in the airport, and from revealing information that could lead to a break-in at your home while you’re traveling. Check out his blog: Flying with Fish.
