We have all witnessed some sort of baggage tampering at airports/buses/trains or in regular travel. Most of the time we know that the bag has been tampered with as soon as we see the damaged or open baggage. But it seems this is not always the case (excuse the pun)…
With the nylon zippers, there is a way you can open the bag entirely, remove items or plant items and then seal the bag with absolutely no evidence that the bag had been tampered with in any way.
Can you imagine the ramifications of this being done at an airport while you are travelling – especially when travelling to those “extreme punishment” countries and somebody has planted something in your bag without even touching the lock.
The way this can be done is the following:
Take a semi blunt object like a ballpoint pen; position it between the two sides of the zipper
and push it towards the inside of the bag and the zip will give way.
Run the pen along the zipper as far as you want the bag to open.
Then to reseal the bag, run the locked zipper mechanism along the zip and back to the original position – the bag will be as if nobody had touched it.
Possible solutions to this tampering are:
• Use a bag with metal zips
• Use a lock or plastic tie back to attach the zip mechanisms to a fixed spot – this will not stop them getting in, but will allow people to notice that it had been tampered with.
Hope this illustrates how extra careful we need to be when allowing our baggage to be handled out of sight.
