When you travel, you don’t just bring the clothes you need for your trip. You also need to bring everything else you need to accomplish your purpose away from home. These are things like your passport, laptop, tablet, jewelry, cash, and more. Your clothes can hang on the clothes rod while you are away from your hotel room. But what about all the rest of your valuable stuff?
You probably don’t feel safe leaving it in a locked hotel room, because the hotel staff is in your room at least once every day. Also, it is now known that the key card for hotel rooms can be hacked. How about the hotel room safe? Can you trust hotel room safes? Short answer: no, you cannot.
Here are 5 reasons you cannot trust that safe.
- Every safe has a factory master code. This code is for the hotel staff to help you retrieve your valuables if you forget your guest code. This master code might be “000000” or something similar. A thief can probably guess it. Sometimes the thief that robs a hotel room safe is a member of the hotel staff.
- If the hotel has a couple hundred rooms with room safes, they are going to be inexpensive models. A thief can use the bouncing technique to open it. This is simple but does need a bit of practice. If the safe is not bolted down securely, they can pick the safe up and drop it on a hard surface while turning the locking knob. If the timing is right, the lock will briefly open while the knob is being turned. More expensive models have a counterweight mechanism to prevent this. But does the safe in your hotel room have it? A thief working this hotel would know.
- If your hotel room key card unlocks your room and your safe, beware. For the past couple of years, at least, it has been possible for a thief to copy your key card. Then they have access to your room and you’re safe. This technique requires buying a read-write device for key cards. They are available for as little as $20. The description of the process is too lengthy to include in this article, but the process only takes a couple of minutes.
- There are relatively few makers of safes and a lot of people trying to learn how to hack them. When someone does figure out how to crack a safe, they post their technique online. Jim Stickey, who is a security expert, has posted a demonstration on YouTube on how to break into a Registry brand hotel room safe. With a paper clip and a Torx screwdriver (available at any hardware store), you can get into that safe in less than two minutes. There are similar demonstrations for other makes of safes on the internet.
- Hotel safes are not bulky and not too heavy to carry. If it is secured to anything other than the floor, the safe can be unfastened or pried loose and carried off. The thief then has plenty of time to open it.
But you can still protect your valuables when you are traveling. You cannot trust your hotel room safe as it is, but you can add security to that safe with a hotel room safe lock that only you control. A good professional locksmith can help you decide from a number of ways you can do this. Safe travels!
A1 Locksmith of the Palm Beaches, Inc. is a professional locksmith service located in West Palm Beach, Florida. The staff is passionate about helping people meet their security needs. Be sure to look them up at https://a1gmtlocksmith.com/. You can also phone them at 561 946-6114.