Your walking back to your hotel, try to make it there before nightfall.  You notice someone following you.  Your pulse quickens as you look around, and you realize your still a little ways away from safety, and you haven’t taken this particular route before. . . . . .

So we’ve covered many “best practices” for travel safety and avoiding trouble, but what do we do if actually caught in the situation?  No one can foresee each situation, but taking action sooner rather than later is advised.   If you do “too much” and look foolish, who cares?   Your still ALIVE!!

• If apprehensive about any situation for any reason, leave.  RUN!  Scream!  Draw maximum attention to yourself!
  
• Pull out the whistle, or your small weapon.  Many nonlethal self defense weapons are available at reasonable costs such as pepper spray, tasers, stun guns.
  
• Make sure the aggressor sees that you are arming yourself.  Many times if they see that you not going to be an easy victim, they’ll move on.
• If followed on foot, cross the street, change direction, and vary your pace.   You can stop to talk with a merchant if possible. Pull out your cell phone and call 911, and stay on the phone with them.
  
• If being followed while driving, take several right turns to verify they truly are following you.  If they are, get to a main street.   Get the plate number and make of the car, along with a description of the occupants.

Many of us are taking “Stay-cations” this year with the poor economy, and the increase fuel prices driving airfares through the roof.  Here are some tips to follow on your family roadtrip, to keep safe and have fun!

• Leave a travel itinerary with a friend or family member, along with contact information for each day if possible.
• Know where you are going and how to get there and back. You can check local highway information for detours, road closures, and traffic news on the local am radio stations. For longer trips, get a weather forecast.
• Inform a family member where you will be and when to expect you back; give them your route if they don’t know it.
• Make sure your car is maintained, with a spare tire that is actually inflated!
• Maintain at least a half tank of gas at all times!
• Keep local emergency cell phone numbers with you:  It’s not always 911.

• If involved in an accident, suspicious or not, you can stay in your vehicle until a marked police car arrives, or have them follow you to a brightly lit public area.
  

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• If broken down and you are approached by a stranger, talk to them through a partially rolled down window with the doors locked.
• Don’t leave valuables in sight, when you exit the car!  This includes the GPS, MP3 player, etc, and don’t allow people to see you loading up the trunk with your shopping valuables.

Maintaining situational awareness is by far, the best practice for travel safety.  Keep your kids close, and teach them to seek out a uniformed security, or police officer if lost.    Stay tuned, as tomorrow we will talk about what to do if confronted by bad guys!

Traveling to a far away land can both be exiting, and dangerous.   Over the next few days, we will be examining some of the best practices to follow, to keep our families safe.  Remember no one cares more about your security than YOU!   You must bee proactive and maintain situational awareness with your family or group.  Review these tips with them. Ensure they know what to do in an emergency and think about how to handle a potentially violent situation if confronted.

When traveling in a foreign country:

• Maintain situational awareness at all times.  You don’t have to be paranoid, just aware.
• Don’t get caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. If you don’t know your way around, don’t try to find it after dark. A vehicle which appears to be lost is an easy mark for criminals and would-be thieves.
• When driving, be aware of vehicles in front of and behind your vehicle. Avoid getting “boxed” in, especially at night and at the entry gate to your residence.
• Do not stop to assist anyone in an accident or other incident. This is a common tactic used to lure good Samaritans into a dangerous situation. Instead, use your mobile phone to call for assistance.
• Ensure your vehicle is road worthy at all times.
• Criminals will try to get you to open your car door or lower your window. For example, someone may steal your car mirror with the hope that you will try to stop them in the act. Let the mirror go. Under no circumstances should you open your door or window in an attempt to stop such a theft.
• Do not carry large sums of cash but do have enough on hand to satisfy a carjacker or an armed assailant on the street.
• Don’t wear expensive jewelry or jewelry that looks expensive as it may attract thieves and carjackers.
• Separate your car and house keys so that a stolen car only has the car keys in it.
• Maintain a low profile when in public. Keep your voice down and be wary of others who may have the opportunity to listen in on private or personal conversations.
• Be particularly aware of your surroundings in crowded public places, such as airports, hotels, restaurants, museums, landmarks and other prominent places that westerners frequent.
• Practice “what if” scenarios with your family.  How fast can you and/or your family react if confronted by armed criminals?  In large public gatherings, have a rendezvous point and an escape route.
• Trust your instincts. If you find yourself in an uncomfortable situation, remove yourself immediately.
• Ensure that you have some key telephone numbers for family and friends memorized in case you become a victim and your mobile phone is stolen.

In this economy, many of us are not flying abroad.  Instead, we are taking more inexpensive, local vacations cross country to see the sights in our own land.   Tomorrow we will cover some of thesafety best practices, specific to road trips!

Each of us have loved ones or family members that lead busy lives.  Whether it be an night out with buddies, working late at the office, or taking night classes, we are all vulnerable to being attacked, and need to have a little personal protection  Enjoy a little peace of mind and carry some non-lethal and legal self defense devices. Most attackers are lazy and easily discouraged when they see that they will pay dearly if they continue their advances.

Pepper Sprays have been standard issue for law enforcement personnel for years. The active ingredient in pepper spray is oleoresin capsicum, the same ingredient that gives chili peppers their kick. These self defense sprays deploy a long stream if fog, liquid, gel or foam, and subdue the assailant, by irritating the mucous membranes. This make thier eyes burn so badly, that they cannot continue the assault, or if inhaled, causes violent gagging.

Pepper Sprays are available in many different containers. They can be found disguised to look like fountain pens, pagers, decorative jewelry, or just the plain old spray can. Either way, using pepper spray on an mugger can certainly buy a person enough time to run away and call for help!

Stunguns are popular, but in my opinion, of limited value. These devices require the attacker to get withing arms reach of you. You then have to physically make contact with them, and the stun is not always effective. I think we’ve all seen the madman in movies shrug off the stun-gun and continue the attack.

TASERS (or Air Tasers) are the self protection weapon of choice today, simply for their record of dependability and stopping power. Tasers are not considered as firearms, and are therefore legal to carry, without a gun license. After years of research Taser International has patented a non lethal “Shaped Pulse Technology” that literally removes a person’s muscular self control. The assailant literally flops to the ground, unable to control his own muscles. The Taser pulse is delivered through 2 hook-like barbs that are shot into the attacker. The barbs are connected to tiny insulated wires, which carry the jolt which lasts 30 seconds in the consumer models, giving your loved one’s enough time to run away. If the unit is lost while defending yourself, Taser International will replace it for free!! They are affordable at just under $300, so how can you beat that??!!

Richard Fan is a practicing emergency and disaster response physician assistant, and personal safety expert. Learn more at www.smartlifestore.com

Hello Ladies and Gentlemen. I would like to submit for your approval a site that I find particularly compelling and useful. It is called OnlineFirstAid.org . . . . . . . . .  and yes, I’m the author!

Many of you who follow ProtectionTalk.com, know that I’m a licensed Trauma physician assistant, and my experiences in working in the emergency room and national disaster response have brought me an interest in personal security. I also believe that protecting yourself and arming yourself with health care knowledge is a good way to keep your body and family secure.

So head on over and check it out, you won’t be disappointed. You’ll find subjects that cover everything from how to handle fevers in the middle of the night, to stopping bleed, to field suturing techniques. You’ll love it!

Rich Fan, PA-C

Every once in a while, the good guys win one.  Someone puts “what is right” before “what is profitable” and makes a decision for the greater good of us all.  On Tuesday November 11th, a internet hosting company called McColo in San Jose, CA, disappeared into thin air.   Along with them, when thousands of spam and phishing schemes.  Brian Krebs, a reporter for the Washington Post, had been on them like a rabid dog on a raw steak.   He explained that the company had been under investigation for a while now, and it’s data had been collected and scrutinized by a team of investigators.   They had found that McColo, had been responsible for about 75% of all spam sent in the United States!

Security expert estimate that McColo must have gone offline at about Tuesday, 9am EST and continued day in-day out monitoring of spam has seen about a 50% drop in spam, beginning Wednesday morning.   It is speculated that these spammers may resurface in Eastern Europe next year.  This is the second triumph in recent years against spammers.   The people directly responsible for putting them out of business have been the upstream providers of the internet service.

A big thank you to all of you that participate in reading and commenting on ProtectionTalk.com!   After much consideration about the appearance and functionality of the site, we have decided to unclutter it a bit.  We are removing article and products ratings system, as most readers prefer to comment, but not necessarily rate an article.   Product ratings, will be continued by the editors on individual items within the article.   Thanks again for participating in the ProtectionTalk.com community!

Rich

The economy is in the toilet, and the scammers are coming out of the woodworks to prey on those in financial straits. Perhaps you or someone you know are entering a situation where financial difficulties are making you vulnerable to cheats and swindlers. The case outlined below is just now coming to a close, but with the recent events with bank closures, it’s sure to increase!

LOS ANGELES— Martha Rodriguez, 35, of Downey is scheduled for sentencing Dec. 10 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles for a $12 million foreclosure scheme that victimized commercial lenders and more than 100 homeowners in Southern California. Rodriguez pled guilty to mail fraud and money laundering in relation to the scam that ran from May 2003 to Nov. 2005, and a federal grand jury recently returned a second superseding indictment adding additional fraud counts and identity theft charges. Included in the indictments were Edward Seung OK, of Torrance; Cynthia Valenzuela, 23, of Downey; Vladimir Stefanovic, 35, of Lancaster; and Maria G. Juarez, 36, of Reseda.

Operating Silvernet Properties in Downey and Bellasi Escrow in Seal Beach, Rodriguez and the defendants used computerized databases that list homes going into foreclosure to target victims. They would approach the victim homeowners and promise to stop the foreclosure of their homes with short-term loans and by using a co-signer who has good credit to refinance the mortgage.

The defendants promised the homeowners that by doing this, they would not only save their home, but their credit would also be improved within 6 to 12 months.

The indictment alleges that the homeowners were asked by the defendants to sign documents including loan applications, trusts and grant deeds, while being assured they wouldn’t lose the titles to their homes. Rodriguez and her co-schemers promised the deed would either be held in escrow or that the title would be returned to them once their credit was repaired. Instead of obtaining refinancing, loan applications were submitted in the names of “straw buyers” claiming to buy the property. Some straw buyers were paid up to $5,000 for the use of their personal information. In other cases, the defendants used the personal information of others without their knowledge.

The false information on the applications caused lenders to fund mortgages to the straw buyers. The defendants would then pay off the loan in default and pocket the rest of the money. As a result, homeowners lost the titles to their homes and lenders sustained losses when the second loan would go into default because the straw buyers failed to make the loan payments.

Rodriguez ran the foreclosure scam while awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to defrauding the Department of Housing and Urban Development in another loan scheme. In 2006, an order to desist and refrain was also issued to Rodriguez from the California Department of Real Estate for conducting herself as a licensed real estate broker and providing residential, mortgage loan, and escrow services without ever having had a real estate license. Rodriguez faces a maximum possible sentence of 40 years in federal prison. Source: By Mary Forney, Los Angeles Times

Rich

Busy merchants in the holiday season, are prime targets for getting duped with “funny money”.   How can you tell if it’s real money?  What if you don’t have one of those special marking pens to be able to tell?  The sad thing is, if you accept counterfeit money, it can be confiscated with NO reimbursement from the bank or business that takes it from you.   Doesn’t seem fair, but that’s the way it goes!   So here are a few tips on checking bill that come your way. . . . .