jerseytom

Seems silly and paranoid, honestly.

We can say 100% for certain that bags do get lost, and in this case your friend has experienced it first hand. It sucks, and you want it to be the quickest and least pain in the ... experience possible. The thing about a burglar seeing your name and address on a luggage tag and using it to rob you is speculation. I've never heard of someone being robbed like that, of friends family and coworkers that have flown frequently for decades. Plenty have lost bags though! I go with what's known and real over some speculative off chance possibility.

Let's think of it from the perspective of a burglar though.

You go to an airport. There's limited area where you can operate without going through security etc. with a boarding pass, and through that area there's going to be almost no opportunity to be scouring bag tags. Mob of people constantly on the move with their bags close by. Everything's a rush and a blur. If by some chance you did get to get a name and address off a bag tag, there's low fractional likelihood that they're actually in an area that you're working in. People who have driven an hour or more to use this airport, people coming back from vacation, etc that live on the other side of the country. You also have no idea whether or not someone's house is actually vacant. If someone sees me going through an airport they don't know if I live alone, or have a housemate/roommate, or have the rest of my family at home, or whatever. Nor do they know if my place is worth robbing or not. They'd have to go look it up, check the neighborhood, stake the place out for activity, etc.

Why would a crook go through all that trouble for a low chance of a score, when it's infinitely easier to just pick a nearby neighborhood, stake some places out and wait for there to be zero activity in or out for several days, and hit it?

In any event I use one of those luggage tags that hides everything except the name and is affixed by a stainless steel cable that screws closed. If someone really wanted to see my details they'd have to get their hands on it and spend a minute or so undoing the whole thing without me noticing.