There's a specific category of advice that gets quietly passed down in some families and never mentioned in others. It isn't law-enforcement doctrine. It isn't on any signs. It's just a small bank of habits that people who've been in unpleasant situations have developed and then tried to pass along to everyone else. We gathered the ones that keep coming up, across cities, continents, and decades. Most take a few seconds to adopt. At least three of them are the sort of thing that could end up mattering.
Switch from a backpack to a crossbody bag — especially in crowds.
The reason backpacks are so popular with pickpockets is that you can't feel anything happening behind you. A crossbody, worn in front of your body, sits against your stomach or hip and is physically difficult to unzip or cut without you noticing. People who've worked in hospitality or security in tourist cities say this single change — a $20 crossbody instead of a backpack — prevents more theft than any other habit on this list.
Corollary: don't carry anything important in the front pockets of a pair of jeans in a crowded market. Those are the easiest pockets in the world to empty.
If you're alone, sit in the front seat of a rideshare.
This one surprised us the first time we heard it. The specific reason isn't about proximity — it's about the child safety locks on the rear doors. If the driver has engaged them, you cannot let yourself out from the back seat. From the front, the door works normally. You hope you never need it to, and you almost certainly won't. But there's no cost to sitting in the front, so most people who know this rule just do.
Learn that you can text 911 in most large US cities.
This is rapidly becoming the single most useful piece of safety knowledge very few people have. In every major US city, and in an increasing number of smaller ones, the 911 system now supports SMS. You start a new text message, type "911" in the recipient field, and send your message.
Why it matters: there are situations — on public transit, in a bathroom, hiding in a closet — where making an audible phone call would put you in more danger. Texting is silent. It works on Wi-Fi. Some jurisdictions now also support live video. If you're in any major metro area, check once whether your local 911 supports text. You won't forget.
Your car fob is a panic button.
The "alarm" or "panic" button on almost every modern car fob sets off the car's horn and flashing lights from anywhere within range. In a parking lot, late at night, even a hundred feet from the vehicle — if something feels off — pressing that button produces an immediate, loud, attention-grabbing disruption that every single person within sight of the lot will look at.
The alarm button on your car fob is, for most people, the closest thing they own to a personal siren. Very few people ever remember it exists.
Three consecutive right turns.
If you're driving and you suspect you're being followed, make three consecutive right turns. Almost no one going anywhere legitimately makes that exact pattern. If the same car is still behind you after the third one, you have confirmation — and you can now drive to a police station, a fire station, or a busy, well-lit public place, rather than home.
On foot, the equivalent is three turns in roughly the same direction, with a stop to check a shop window in between. Legitimate foot traffic doesn't follow that.
If someone seems to be following you on foot, turn around and address them directly.
The counterintuitive instinct is to walk faster. The more effective response, according to every retired officer we heard from, is to stop, turn around, and — if the situation warrants it — loudly say something like "Stop right there" or "Why are you following me?" Predatory behavior almost always depends on the element of surprise and on the target being passive. A direct, loud confrontation upends both.
Most of the time it turns out you weren't being followed at all. In the few cases where you were, the person almost always leaves.
Park under a light. Always.
When you park at a grocery store at 4 p.m. on a Tuesday, it does not seem necessary to park under a pole light. But if you come out of that grocery store at 8 p.m. because your shopping took longer than you thought, suddenly it is dark — and future-you will be very, very glad that past-you parked in the spot that is now well-lit. This is the single cheapest piece of safety advice on the list. Get in the habit.
Check the back seat. Lock the doors the second you sit down.
Two habits, fifteen seconds total, that should be muscle memory. Before you unlock your car, glance through the windows at the back seat. After you sit down, the very first thing your hand does — before the seatbelt, before the key — is hit the lock button. Both of these protect against specific, documented classes of crime. Both take almost no time. Neither is overkill.
Don't look like a tourist — even when you are one.
This one comes from people who've lived in or near tourist cities like Barcelona, Rome, and Paris for decades. The advice isn't to dress a certain way. It's to stop broadcasting confusion. Don't stand in the middle of a famous square with a huge open map. Don't stop abruptly at a crosswalk to scroll Google Maps with your phone held out. Find a café, a corner, or a quiet bench, and get your bearings with the phone held close to you, your back to a wall.
Pickpockets don't look for clothing. They look for distracted and stationary. Deny them both, and they move on.
Split your essentials. Never let a purse be the single point of failure.
If everything — phone, ID, keys, card, cash — lives in one bag, that bag is the only thing a thief has to get. If your phone is in your front pocket, your card is in a different pocket, your cash is in a third, and your car keys are in a small lanyard pocket inside your jacket, the total loss from a snatched bag drops from catastrophic to annoying.
Several people we heard from have been robbed. Every one of them, after it happened, adopted this habit. None of them have gone back.
Trust your gut. It's smarter than your manners.
The habit every person with experience in this area came back to. If a situation feels off, it almost always is — and the instinct to leave is almost always right. The instinct to override it, because you don't want to be rude, or because you've already committed, or because it would be embarrassing to be wrong — that is the instinct that repeatedly gets people into the situations afterward they wish they'd left.
This one is hard to practice, because the whole system of being a polite adult is built around suppressing the feeling. But the people who survive the situations in this article overwhelmingly describe the same thing in retrospect: "I knew. And I went anyway."
Know, and don't go anyway.
