I was in China and had a choice remain in the terminal and have the staff there get my onward ticket, collect my bags, recheck my bags. All of which meant giving them them my baggage tags and passport. Or get a transit visa, exit the terminal, and deal with it myself. We choose the former. They had our passport for over 5 hours. We even saw them drop a whole stack of passports and baggage tags. Identity theft was the least of my concerns.