These holidays, it took you months to plan them. I know, they stopped you from sleeping so much you were impatient. And you’ve already imagined them a thousand times. Unfortunately, it does not take much for your long-awaited trip to turn into a nightmare: passport theft, bank card fraud or fraudulent contactless payment.
There are some simple tips and little binding to protect themselves. So no need to become paranoid and be afraid of everything, you can use these tips in your way, depending on the country where you go and according to your desires.
SECURE BANANA POUCH
We all remember the bananas that we wore in the 90s. The great fashion at the time and the height of the practice. Do not worry, I will not advise you to wear a big banana from our childhood. On the contrary, we will opt for a discreet pouch. The goal is to carry your important papers, under your t-shirt, without anyone realizing that you’re wearing it.
We bought at decathlon a flesh-colored pouch, for a pittance. During our road trip to the USA, we slipped our two passports, our bank cards, the keys of the house, the keys of the bag, driver’s license and cash.
To avoid spoiling, the cover has RFID protection, that is to say, it prevents contactless payments.
RFID PROTECTION
If you are not convinced of the secure banana, I urge you to take a wallet or RFID cardholder. No matter where you travel, you are not safe from a bad person. It is also valid in your country of residence. The protection will isolate your card and avoid unwanted contactless payments many of whom are victims in public transport in particular.
Namely, some banks allow you to disable the contactless one-click in their application and reactivate it if necessary. It can always be useful.
HIDE HIS CRYPTOGRAM
When you make a transaction, on your receipt, the 16 digits of your CB are hidden (by XXXX). However, in some countries (United States for example) they appear on the ticket that keeps the merchant. There is also, the expiration date. So, the honest merchant must simply remember the 3 or 4 digits of your cryptogram to have all the data on your card.
To protect himself a lot, he decides to scratch the cryptogram (but you have to remember to write it in a safe and secret place). For my part, I preferred to paste a pellet that hides the cryptogram.
PLACE YOUR VALUABLES STRATEGICALLY
When you go on a trip, you tend to bring money in kind. Avoid storing all your money or bank cards in the same bag. If you lose the bag (flight, forget, etc) you will be happy to have some of your money always accessible.
However, I advise you to have a bag where you collect all your valuables: camera, go pro, iPad, computer, drone … In short, all that you absolutely must not lose. Knowing that everything is there, you will watch over this bag as on the apple of your eyes.
HAVE A CLOUD
Once again, it’s a tip that can serve as much in travel as in everyday life: having a copy of these documents on a cloud. It seems essential to me. Imagine, you lose all your papers. Clearly this is the big galley, but with a copy, you can at least justify your identity at the Embassy of your country. It can help.
Still, need to choose the cloud. You are not unaware that some nasty companies consider that everything on their servers is theirs. For my part, I use iCloud because Apple has always been an exemplary company for the protection of data (for example Apple will not collect your personal information to sell to advertisers or other organizations … unlike google … among others)
