Another headline caught my attention today while things were quiet from the LH Front.
According to a DailyMail UK piece including video evidence, a Canadian business traveller stumbled across a safe in his hotel room that has a default passcode that can be entered to override any combination and open the safe. The traveller suggested that the hotel staff told him the default code is 000000 when he called the front desk to ask them to reset his safe after he had forgotten his code. The article goes on to explain other ways to bypass hotel safes as well. None are difficult to master.
I’m not sure if this is a big problem and one that extends to a variety of safes in hotel rooms around the world. But if it is possible in a hotel room somewhere in Ontario, then it may be likely to be possible anywhere.
So the next time your in a hotel, try it out. See if the passcode default is nothing but 0’s, thus rendering the protection of your valuables fairly worthless.
old news… resurfaces every year or so… next
It is important not to confuse hotel safes with safes found in hotel rooms.
Safes found in hotel rooms have been known for years to be unsafe and basically worthless in terms of security — I have written articles about that in the past — whereas leaving your valuables to be stored in the hotel safe at the front desk is considered to be more secure.