Good one Tom. That seriously is the best defense of all, just being cheap- $15 watch, $85 laptop, nothing really worth anything. Unfortunately some of these crooks are so stupid they will steal your trash if they can get access to it. Identity theft maybe, or perhaps just peeing on someone's parade. Lots of crooks out there for sure.

 

I sure hope it doesn't happen to me or anyone else here. I guess that makes sense to stuff everything in the bag and go. As for the YMCA theft, man that's gotta be a bummer. I had my wallet stolen sometime and I can relate to it taking several months to get all your cards replaced etc. I think Amtrak Guest Rewards took the longest... Now I try to keep a list of every item in my wallet.

Reading all about these viruses makes me glad I use a mac ! I have only twice in the past 5 years had incidents that were virus-like. The first was simply because of the hard drive going bad from age & corrupting itself, the second seemed to be from a bad core audio install which may or may not have been corrupted from some bad software. May have been because I had previously used an older OS. Dunno. I use a few apps that only work on Mac otherwise I might have considered springing for a high end Windows machine with Windows 7 (I hear that's a really solid OS ?).

 

I remember when hotels used an actual room key .

 

Yeah, I was going to mention this. Hotel security is probably better than it has ever been in history when taken as a whole... they used to use mechanical keys that were only rekeyed / rotated on a long schedule or when keys were lost/not returned, and making a copy using a bit of silly putty was easy.

Now there are cameras everywhere and electronic keys that can be invalidated rapidly. That electronic hack notwithstanding, I would still bet that the highest risk still comes from an inside job or cleaning crew, who can always get in your room easily anyway. Use the safe, use the deadbolt, and a lot of common sense, don't flaunt wealth or items of easy theft, but wouldn't worry too too much.

 

When I get into my hotel room, I almost never leave it until the next morning at check out. If I have to leave for dinner or get ice for my nightly Coke, I leave my Miniature Schnauzer to guard the room.

And as Tom said - I don't bring anything of value when I travel or at work. My cell phone is so old and of such poor quality, the thief who entered my office one fine morning to take the laptop actually left the phone behind even though both were sitting next to each other.

 

Nightly coke habit huh? That can't be cheap.

 

Until John Goodman shows up ?