Put your foot through the strap

Because the bag on the floor beside you is the one that goes, and it goes while you are looking at something else. Many people put a foot or a leg through a strap the moment they sit, or hold the bag between their legs, so that a quick grab has to move them too. Others put a foot through the strap of a bag on the floor: with a leg through the strap, a snatch drags the owner, and a thief who has to drag someone tends not to try. Some people set out the how, after someone found the instruction unclear: put the arm or the leg through one strap over the shoulder, crossed over the body over, or put the leg through the strap in the middle. Many people do the sitting-down version: loop the strap round a chair leg or the table leg, or clip it there with a carabiner or the little clip some bags come with, so that taking the bag means lifting a chair or making a noise. One person uses the child-restraint clip in the top of a shopping cart to hold a handbag. One person says an older generation taught the same reflex a generation earlier — keeping the bag close and out of reach. One person says they do this everywhere they travel, and one has done it for three years. And one person gives the version this page likes best: the real value of the strap round your ankle is not the thief, it is you — you cannot walk off and leave the bag under the table, because it comes with you.

Mostly you, standing up. Some people have forgotten the foot was in the strap, stood, and gone over — with the bag, in public — and others say they tripped walking away; people argue exactly this, some saying it works and some saying it makes you fall over and look ridiculous, and people’s deciders are whether you remember to take your foot out before you stand, and how stable the seat is. Then the thief who does not care. One person says the foot-through-strap has documented failure modes: a thief stamps on the foot until you let go, or pulls hard enough to drag you along, and one person warns that in some places resisting a snatch ends in violence. People’s argument over whether anchoring beats a strong thief ends as you would expect: it stops a quick grab, and against someone determined and stronger than you it may cost you your balance or worse. Some people warn a determined thief cuts the strap — scissors — quickly, so the leg is not a lock; one person warns that in a packed train carriage the single-strap handbag is what gets cut as the doors open. One person says that putting a leg through a strap leaves you off-balance and that staying alert does more than any physical barrier; one says whether it works at all depends on the bag’s fit and weight. This page carries all of that as people said it. The habit is for the bag on the floor of a café while you read; it is not a plan for a fight, and the safety line above says what to do if it becomes one.

People argue this at length, and this page will not settle it, so here are the sides. Some people say airports are too watched for a bag snatch — cameras, staff, screening — and the tip is unnecessary there; some people say small thefts and pickpocketing still happen in terminals. Many people say a US airport is not where it happens and one person says abroad it can be, where security may be indifferent. People also argue whether tight security makes the advice overkill or whether vigilance is still needed because distraction, not a thief, is how things get lost; and some people note that in the US the baggage hall is open to the public, so the risk is there rather than past security. One person had a phone taken on a plane while they were in the toilet and never got it back; one says unattended bags at US airports tend to be removed by the screening agency and sent to lost property rather than stolen, which this page carries as their claim, and not as a reason to leave a bag anywhere. People’s own deciders across all these arguments: whether you mean a whole-bag snatch or a hand in an open pocket; whether you have passed security or are still in the public hall; whether you are at home or abroad, and whether you trust the security staff more than your own attention. What they agree on is where the habit earns its keep: buses, trains, parks, libraries, cafés — some people name the vending machine and the library as where backpacks go, and one person says packed trains are where single-strap handbags get taken. One person did the strap trick a lot when napping on public transport. So: the café and the train, yes; the departure lounge, argue it among yourselves.

Locks less than you would hope; zips more. Some people say a padlock on a zip stops only the most casual opportunist — a determined thief cuts the zip fabric with a blade — and one person warns a pen jammed into the zip teeth beside the lock slides it open without touching the lock at all. One person’s small habit does more: on a double-zip pocket, push both pulls to one end rather than meeting them in the middle, because pulls that meet in the middle are the easiest to separate. Some discussions hide the openings instead — a rain cover over the backpack, the bag worn on the front in a crowd, zips turned inward against the body — and some people swap a backpack for a duffel or wear it in front to make it less visible and less reachable. One person lines the bag with a sheet of hard plastic against a razor; one buys a bag with steel mesh in the fabric and a strap that clips round a table leg, though another person in the same conversation suspects the recommendation of being the maker talking. Some people carry a decoy: a cheap wallet or an obvious pocket with nothing worth taking in it — one filled with marmalade — so that the fast hand finds the wrong thing. And one line about wrapping luggage in plastic film for a flight, which people argue about: some people warn screeners in the US may cut it open or hold the bag, and one person says not to wrap or lock checked luggage on a domestic US flight at all; this page carries that as people’s own.

Then the bag was the plan, and the plan is not you. Some people warn never take on a group — back away and wait for help — and one person warns that resisting a snatch can end in violence or being dragged, so once a bag is being pulled from you — a case people asked about and left open — this page’s own line is to let it go. People prepared for that day in several ways, one person each, which this page passes on as theirs. Split the things that hurt to lose — money, cards, identification, the phone — between a hidden pocket, a wallet and wherever you are staying, so no one bag holds everything. Photograph or scan the documents that would be hard to replace and keep the copies somewhere you can reach without the bag. And turn on the find-and-wipe service your phone offers, so a stolen phone can be located or emptied from another screen. Some people add the plane version: nothing you cannot lose goes in the hold, only in the bag that stays with you. What this page does not cover, and this page will not invent: what to do if a bag is taken from you at knifepoint, how to report a theft and to whom in a given country, and whether any insurance covers it — those are gaps people left, and what to do after a theft — reporting it, insurance — is a gap people named, and a local police station or your travel insurer are this page’s own pointers.