...always been interested; I fly a lot internationally and never seem to pick any of these up on my bags. Yet, I see people travelling with their luggage covered in those little security checked stickers from the airport.

I fly via DXB, HKG and LHR and never pick up the security screened stickers yet some bags do. Especially the big orange HKG ones.

Is it random that one picks these up or are there certain airport where one will get these?

I think that at DXB every screened bag gets a sticker. They're very annoying to peel off.

As this concerns travel security, please follow the discussion as it moves to the better forum. Thanks, Ocn Vw 1K, Moderator, TravelBuzz.

Flew HKG and JFK on CX - we picked up those "big" security stickers on checked luggages (and still on it,) extra steps taken as I supposed it's USA bound non-stops? Whereas PVG-JFK, they used much smaller sticker for the suitcases. Between PVG, HKG & SGN - no stickers that I can recall.

I haven't seen this out of the European airports I frequent.

Before September 11th at JFK, United used to put a huge, green "X-Ray Before Loading" tag on all international bags. (Domestic bags didn't have to be screened.)

It depends on the contract security agency and the airport. One of my bags still has a huge "Continental Security" tag from Buenos Aires. I get smiles from former Contintental employees at the airport.

Some airports, particularly in India, have a special tag for hand baggage as well.

For a long time, the ICTS personnel would put a small sticker on checked luggage--the same sticker used on the back of the passport and/or on the boarding card. But I haven't seen that in a long time. I imagine those stickers fell right off.

At Ben Gurion Airport, they have large tags that are essentially all bar codes. These are used for checked and hand luggage that has been selected for screening.

And, of course, the Hawaii Agricultural Inspection stickers remain in full force.

As technology improves, I imagine that stickers and tags will eventually fall by the wayside. They do seem like an anachronism.

Got stickers recently at Columbo, Sri Lanka; Hanoi, Viet Nam; and a few other places. They can be hard to remove since they are designed to shread when played with, so you end up with little pieces of security sticker.

The TSA stickers are usually stuck on the baggage tags, so those are never an issue.

The only place that seems to put stickers on my suitcase is HKG. It's big orange one that says HKIA and has some sort security embedded in it.

Same here. Traveled extensively throughout Europe in May and only got marks and stickers on the airline baggage tags. Every time I fly west to say Asia and my bag looks like a bad bumper sticker joke.