Pre-travel security checklist

Before you leave home

To print or keep on a phone: the checklist as a PDF.

• Set the alarm, and check who receives its alerts while you are away.
• Leave a key with one trusted person nearby who can reach the house quickly.
• Pause deliveries and newspapers, or send parcels to a collection point.
• Put lamps on timers in the rooms that are lit on an ordinary evening.
• Brief staff on who is expected at the door and what callers are told.
• Tell only those who need the dates: family, staff, the neighbour with the key.
• Keep dates and destinations out of out-of-office replies to people outside the business.
• Lock car keys and spare keys away from doors, windows and letterboxes.
• Ask someone to clear the post and put the bins out on the usual days.

Timers and a neighbour with a key suit most absences. Where the absence is public — a fixture list, a tour, a premiere — cover for the house while you are away puts an SIA-licensed officer there for that window. The records that give an address away are in how to keep your home address private.

Documents and money

• Check each passport’s expiry date against the entry requirements of every country on the route.
• Read the FCDO travel advice for each country, transit stops included.
• Sign up for the FCDO’s email updates for each country you will visit.
• Photograph passports, visas and prescriptions, and keep the copies where you can reach them offline.
• Take two payment cards and carry them in separate places.
• Save each card issuer’s number for reporting a lost or stolen card.
• Check the travel insurance covers every traveller, the whole trip and any planned activities.
• Leave the full itinerary and hotel details with one person at home.

Phones, laptops and tablets

• Install the latest software updates on every device before you leave.
• Back up phones and laptops, and check the backup can be restored.
• Set a passcode on every device, the children’s included.
• Turn on each device’s find-my service, and practise locating it from another device.
• Switch on two-step verification for email, banking and cloud accounts.
• Take only the devices the trip needs, and lock the rest away at home.
• Treat public and hotel wi-fi with caution; use mobile data for banking and email.
• Turn off automatic joining of open wi-fi networks on every device.

The journey

• Use luggage tags with a name and mobile number, never a home address.
• Keep passports, phones, keys and medicines in hand luggage.
• Book cars through a firm you know, and get the driver’s name beforehand.
• Ask for an arrivals board that shows a reference, not your full name.
• Let the driver say whom they are collecting before you give your name.
• Keep bags in sight at the kerb, at check-in and at security.
• Leave the watch that draws attention at home, or keep it under a cuff.
• Share live location with one person at home for the travel day only.

Arrival and the hotel

• Ask reception to write the room number down rather than say it aloud.
• Give the room number only to people you have arranged to see.
• Check the door lock, the latch and any connecting door on arrival.
• Find the two nearest fire exits and count the doors to each.
• Put passports and valuables in the room safe, or ask for the hotel’s main safe.
• Ring the front desk yourself before acting on any call claiming to be reception.
• Carry the hotel’s card so a driver can be shown the address.
• Save the local emergency number and your country’s nearest embassy or consulate.
• Agree a meeting point and a check-in time with everyone travelling.

Social media while you are away

• Post photographs once you are home, not while you are away.
• Turn off location tagging in the camera and in each app.
• Ask family, friends and staff not to post or tag you until you are back.
• Check the background of every photograph: hotel name, room number, car registration.
• Pause live location sharing with anyone who does not need it.
• Agree with the children what stays off their accounts until the family is home.
• Check who can see stories and posts, and tighten the settings for the trip.

For visitors coming to the UK

Visitors from Europe, the USA, Australia, Canada and certain other countries usually need an Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) rather than a visa. British and Irish passport holders do not, nor do people with permission to live, work or study in the UK.

• Check on gov.uk whether each traveller needs an ETA or a visa.
• Apply for every traveller, babies included, on the passport each will travel on.
• Allow up to three working days for a decision.
• Apply on gov.uk or the UK ETA app; other websites may charge more.
• Get an ETA for a connection that passes through UK border control.
• Save 999 and 112: both reach the UK’s emergency services.
• Expect UK protection to be unarmed: private armed protection is unlawful in Great Britain.
• Arrange any UK protection before you fly, with one person accountable for the visit.
• Read how an engagement begins, and how confidentiality is handled, before the first call.
• Check any officer’s SIA licence before the first day: how to check it on the register.

Common questions