Don't let identity thieves ruin your trip

Bring only what you need -- and choose it wisely

There's no reason to bring a wallet or purse that's loaded down with extra credit cards and other sensitive information. Take these steps:

• Clean out your wallet. Foley and Coffey recommend carrying no more than a couple of credit cards and an ATM card. But most importantly, Coffey says, "Make sure you do not carry your Social Security number." If you have a military ID, this may be impossible. But most people can avoid risk by bringing the copy they made of their medical card with the last four digits missing. Also, Coffey says you'd be surprised how many people carry their ATM PINs in their wallets. Don't be one of them.

• Leave checking-account and other financial information at home. Plenty of business travelers bring bills and other busywork from home to take advantage of downtime. But Claudia's experience sheds light on the risks of doing so. She says she no longer travels with personal information, and she advises friends against doing so. She also says she doesn't let anyone in her hotel rooms during her stay. "I can live without someone tidying my bed," she says.

• Bring an ATM or stored-value card instead of a debit card. Neither Foley nor Coffey is a fan of debit cards. Instead, both men carry ATM cards, which require the use of a PIN to extract cash. Stored-value cards, such as the American Express Travelers Cheque Card, are also a good solution, they say, though fees can really add up if you're using it to withdraw cash. For lost or stolen Travelers Cheque Cards, American Express says it can replace the funds within 24 to 72 hours.

Keep an eye on what you bring

"No hotel room should be treated as truly secure," says Foley. Many people are particularly lax about securing valuables such as laptops and cameras, he notes. You wouldn't leave your wallet sitting out, but many people will leave a $1,500 laptop in the room. Instead, consider the following:

• Use hotel safes to store your valuables, including your wallet, passport and digital camera. Coffey gives the advantage to front-desk safes over the in-room variety, but says the latter are usually effective. Foley cautions, though, that not all in-room safes are created equal. The best are those with electronic combination locks where you create the combo, he says. Second best is an in-room safe with a barrel key, which looks like a metal tube with little prongs inside. "But remember," Foley cautions, "There's going to be someone with a copy of that key in the hotel." The least-safe safes are those that use easy-to-duplicate flat keys. No safe at all? You can also bring your own portable safe, usually in the form of a small bag or backpack that's reinforced with wire mesh. They can be secured to a large, fixed object in the room with a cable.

• Use money belts or safety-enhanced fanny packs to carry your passport and wallet. These have extras such as braided steel cables in their straps that can't be cut through or carabiners holding the zippers together so they can't be easily unzipped.

• Label your valuables with contact information. Believe it or not, Coffey says, there's a good chance that a misplaced item will be returned to you if there's a way for someone to contact you.

• Don't let your credit card out of your sight. This is difficult to do in the U.S., where restaurant waiters routinely run your credit card at a register away from your table. But you can opt to pay with cash or traveler's checks in those situations. Outside the U.S., Foley says, it's common for wait staff to bring the credit card reader to the table.

• Be aware of your surroundings, especially in crowds at markets, on subways, on buses, etc. If you're carrying a laptop, be extra careful at what Coffey calls transaction locations -- hotel front desks or ticket counters where you need to put down your laptop to conduct business.

• Keep your receipts. This will make it easier to flag any suspicious transactions when you return home.

Electronic safety

If you're traveling with a laptop or you're using public computer terminals in Internet cafes or hotel lobbies, you'll want to heed the following:

• Don't access your bank accounts, pay bills or complete transactions on public computers. The computer may have been compromised by spyware and keyloggers that can capture your passwords and account information.

• Make sure the computer's firewall is enabled. Foley recommends making sure it's both enabled and updated. If you don't feel comfortable doing this on a public computer or don't know how, consider carefully what you access from there. E-mail is probably OK, provided it doesn't contain sensitive information.

• Don't save your login on public terminals. Before hitting that "Enter" key when signing into your e-mail, make sure no checkboxes are selected to save your login and password by default.

• Beware shoulder surfers. People can hover behind you and note passwords or other important information. (Take the same precautions at ATMs.)

• Use three lines of defense for your personal laptops and PDAs: First, physically secure these devices. Coffey says he never leaves his laptop unsecured, even when he's nearby. He uses a security cable to lock it down. Next, use a password to get into the device, so that someone else can't easily log on and access your data. And finally, you should encrypt the data. "It's not the value of the laptop so much as the value of the data on it," Coffey says.

When you return

Before you breathe a sigh of relief that you've had a great trip and managed to come back with all your valuables and financial information intact, double-check your accounts.

"The first thing I'd do when I got home is contact my credit card companies and verify the charges that have been made," Foley says. He also checks his bank account withdrawals. If your plans required you to make transactions at public computers, check those accounts and change their passwords.

All of this may sound tiresome, but it's no comparison to how world-weary you'd feel after battling to regain control of your identity.

"There's not a day that goes by when (the maid) is not in my life, in my thoughts," Claudia says.

Updated Nov. 12, 2009

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