How unsafe is your hotel safe?
 

Of course it all depends... on how diligent the property is, who they hand out the master codes to. And in some instances, whether they change the default master (override) code!

YouTube video here.

You may want to check this out at your next hotel - if the safe opens with the default code given, you may want to not put your passport, etc. in it.

OTOH, the key locked (such as "Safekeeper") ones are, er, safe, right? Not exactly.

Also previous discussion here about how easy it may be to open the safe (I used a butter knife when we lost the key once)

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trave...tel-rooms.html

A locksmith that only does safes told me the ones you get at mass market stores can be defeated in minutes. He recommended at TL or TR 15 or 30, if possible. X6 is even better.

15 or 30 is the minutes it takes to open. X6 is protection on all 6 sizes.

Wow, who knew? I certainly didn't. Thanks for posting the youtube links.

I have never been one to bring $3,000 worth of jewelry with me when I travel just for this reason. However, I did not realize how truly easy it was to get into some safes. I can think of one place we stayed that the employee spent a great deal of time trying to get into our safe after we screwed it up and the manager came with (hotel protocol). Guess we know where my jewelry would be safe! But now I also know that, in the future, our passports may just be kept in our jackets. Not sure what we'll do about our beach vacations though!

I think I'll keep our valuables in one of the hotel's lockboxes/safety deposit boxes. But where to keep the key to the box? ;-)

Maybe the safe company's theory was that anyone dumb enough to use "12345" as a combination deserves to be robbed? :D

What's wrong with that code? It's so easy to remember! ;)

Codes act as a deterrent and theres' going to be approximately 100,000 different combinations on a 5 digit code..

chances are when lock, thieves probably won't try to punch in random codes, they'll me more apt to hook it up to a machine or open the safe by force..

"12345... that's the same as the combination on my luggage!" (from Spaceballs) :D

Beat me to this one Kevin! :D

Pretty sure the issue was not the selected code of 123456 that was used in the video as an example. It would not matter what code the person took, it could be any of the one million different codes.

The issue is that the default code every one of those safes ships with, the 000000 one still opens it, no matter what number you enter as your personal code. If the hotel does not change the default code on each safe to something else, whatever code you put in makes no difference.

The thief doesn't need to try 123456, they don't need to use any kind of machine, they have to go to the keyboard and type in

zero
zero
zero
zero
zero
zero

and it will open because many hotels don't bother changing the default admin code to open it when a guest forgets their number.

I would guess with all the publicity this has been getting in the past few weeks many hotels are scrambling for their manual to see how to change the code.

Or as one of the makers of Hotel Safes has said after this story went viral

When a guest forgets [his or her] code, the safe may be opened by hotel security using the override code.

It is important to note that only the most negligent of hotel operators would leave the override code set to all 0′s, a default code, some other easy to guess code. The override code can (and must for obvious reasons) be changed to something difficult to guess prior to putting the safe into operation.

Great insight into this matter..

Hotel safes on the whole, doesn't seem very safe at all.:(

Wow. Thanks for the video. I've definitely got to take the advice of trying all "0"s before putting anything in there. :eek:

I'll try that too on my next trip... all zeroes and see what happens