I have been robbed a few times in my travels and it sucked. I would hate to let the knowledge I gained from it go to waist. I have seemed to get the style down to where I am not the target of thievery opportunities. Here's the overview in a nut shell.

1. Don't wear nice things in un-nice places. Hide the earrings, watches, and anything that looks shiny. That is a red flag in some places.

2. Get everything valuable to a safe place as soon ASAP. Your first goal when traveling is to find a hostel, bungalow, home stay to safely put your stuff at. Don't walk around town and hangout with all your valuables, that is the best way to be stranded with out anything.

3. Adapt to the culture. I now get at least 2-3 pieces of clothing at the place I am traveling to so I fit in the with scene. This blends you in and you can also get good deals while traveling.

4. Carry only the essential needs for the day. Carrying everything you might want is unneeded. For a thief perspective you have the highest od of having something valuable compared to person that looks like they have nothing.

5. Approach everything with confidence that you are going to be fine. This has saved me from most of the robberies that could have happened. From a massive guy approaching me in Rio de janero to a reggae party in Costa Rica that went wrong I have learned that deep down we are the one's to be blamed for being robbed. Our whole aura changes when we feel we are in a scary situation and then that situation adapts to our reality and that is either "i am about to be robbed!" or "every thing is going just fine".

I'm a guy and have never been robbed while traveling...at least, not yet. Tactics that have contributed to this include:

1. In safe places my wallet is never in the normal "wallet" pocket. In risky places a dummy wallet is in the normal "wallet" pocket. The dummy wallet contains a small amount of local currency, a joke $1 million bill, and a collection of those dummy credit cards that come in the mail.
2. Keep looking around and behind you. Try to look like you are completely alert, even when you are tired.
3. I naturally walk fast, and in risky locations I walk very fast and pivot unexpectedly. Even if I don't know where I'm going, I walk fast. Only once has a pickpocket caught up with me (at night, in Costa Rica's capital city, he had to have been running) and he was just trying to figure out which pocket had a wallet by bumping me from behind. He did it twice, but I never reached for any pocket so he gave up.
4. Avoiding weird situations. Outside the Gare du Nord in Paris one of a group of men inexplicably fell down in front of me...had I reached down to help him I assume the others would have crowded around and relieved me of whatever was in my pockets. I just stepped around him and sped up, went 20 yards, then turned to see that his friends were "helping" him up.
5. In a group, agree upon a codeword for suspicious characters. My family uses "bogey," such as, "There is a bogey in gray shirt behind us."
6. Stare down potential pickpockets. At the bazaar in Cairo my family and I were (of necessity) walking very slowly in the crowd, and we noticed a young teenager following us. We all stopped, turned around and stared at him for 30 seconds. We had to do this several times before he finally gave up.
7. Be aware that not all pickpockets are subtle. Right after we obtained cash from at ATM at the Rome train station, my daughter's jeans pocket was picked by a guy who just forcefully reached in and grabbed the cash...nothing sneaky about it.

These techniques have served us well.

I think that the idea of a dummy wallet is a good one--and you always can use that local currency as your "walking around money" during the day. In fact, it seems really smart to the dummy wallet at the craft market in Cairo instead of taking out your real wallet and holding it out to count money with so many people everywhere around you. Just be sure your REAL credit cards are someplace safe.

But, aside from the above, I think that the OP is correct that the best thing you can do is make yourself NOT look like a valuable target. You can accomplish this goal in your dress, your accoutrements, and your behavior:

1) Try to blend in by wearing similar clothing to the people around you. If you're in Santiago, Chile, where most people wear conservative, dark clothes and dress shoes, don't wear colorful shorts, flip flops, and a Hawaiian shirt!

2) Part of blending in also means not wearing very elaborate, expensive-looking clothing, dresses, etc. Keep it simple and reasonable to avoid standing out in a crowd. Wear a hat if your hair is dyed magenta. Wear sunglasses as much as possible during the day to mask your eyes and make yourself look a little more intimidating.

3) NEVER wear jewelry, expensive watches, high-tech cameras around your neck, etc., in public. Keep that stuff at the hotel (or preferably don't travel with it at all)!

4) Use a cheap, replacable GSM phone while overseas, preferably one that does NOT have all of your contacts in it. No reason to risk all of the data on your expensive Blackberry!

5) ALWAYS walk with purpose, even if you have no idea where you are or where to go. NEVER stand at a street corner squinting at a map and looking around with a confused expression. If you need to stop and consult your map or guidebook, GO INTO A STORE!!!

6) Keep your wits about you. In markets, on subways, and in other congested areas, wear your backpack on your chest, and keep an arm draped across it. Keep your other hand in (or on top of) your pocket, on your wallet.

7) Watch in ALL directions. If something ahead doesn't look right (i.e. a bunch of people loitering on the sidewalk), cross the street. Especially at night. Don't walk alone in a deserted area after dark! Try to stay in areas with lots of people. In certain areas, there might be political activity--stay away from it.

8) Use a waist/neck pouch for your passport, credit cards, IDs, etc. Pickpockets won't be able to get under your clothes (especially if you follow the advice above and dress to blend in).

9) Keep the TV on and a single light on in your hotel room to make the room seem occupied to thieves passing by in the hallway.

That suggestion No. Five is probably why you get robbed so often, and I don't. People who go around confident that they are going to be just fine don't have the alertness to stay out of trouble. Things don't have to be fine, and bad things do happen to good people. It's my belief that one of the reasons that men are more often the victims of violent crimes is because they are confident that it can't happen to them, so they get themselves into more dicey situations.

The other guy's advice not to wear high tech cameras is equally bad. For many people, a major purpose of travel is to explore their photography hobby. So if they can't take a good camera, they may as well stay at home.

Yes, there are good suggestions here, but these two bad suggestions are ones that I hear over and over again. "Blame the victim" is just useless advice, because confident people get robbed as often or probably more often than paranoid, alert people. "Don't bring your good camera" is just plain annoying because it can't be followed if you are serious about your photography.

Let me extend my remarks. I like photography as well, and I always take a mid-range camera on my travels. But I NEVER have it dangling around my neck in a town square! Instead, I keep in in my bag, and remove it only to shoot photos; then I put it away again. The point I was trying to make is that if you WEAR your camera, you are basically displaying it like jewelry, and it will attract attention. The goal is to keep your camera out of sight as much as possible!

When I'm in high-risk areas, I don't carry my expensive Nikon DSLR with lenses, etc. Instead, I carry a Nikon "prosumer" 8700 8.0 MP camera that shoots decent quality pictures but is much smaller and more compact--easy to hide in my daypack or even briefcase.

Another suggestion I would make, if photography is a serious hobby, is to carry multiple memory cards and swap them at the hotel regularly. For example, spend a morning shooting, then stop by the hotel during lunch and switch to a new card (or download your images to your laptop or a FW drive), EVEN IF THE CARD IS NOT FULL. You don't want to spend all day shooting 1000 photos and then have your camera stolen (or confiscated by Guardia Nacional, as still happens in some places) and lose everything!

One more thing to add: Trust your instincts. If someplace doesn't feel right, it probaly isn't. I was walking down a street in York, PA at night to go to a Chinese restaurant, and I noticed that nobody was around and I felt creepy. I turned around and went someplace else (closer to my hotel). The next morning I learned that somebody had been shot near the Chinese restaurant. Be suspicious!

I've come to learn that most people simply won't mess with me. Not saying it won't/can't happen, but when your 6'3, 250lbs, shaved head, barrel chest, look scary all ready, most people just leave you alone.

Great info!

There is a good AP article at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/1..._n_141631.html entitled, "Suddenly, It May Be Cool to be American Again"

This relates less to pickpocketing than to physical violence against American tourists.