A former CIA and FBI agent has revealed her top tips for staying safe while traveling, including sleeping on specific hotel levels and avoiding private rentals.
Tracy Walder, 44, worked for the CIA as an officer and for the FBI as a special agent between 2000 and 2005, and learned to take extra precautions while serving overseas.
Today, the Dallas-based criminal justice professor shared her best safety tips in a TikTok video, including using a doorstop, sharing your route with your family, and downloading a panic button app.
Before even setting foot in a foreign country, Tracy scans the area for any threats and sets up an app that alerts contacts of her location in the event of an emergency.
A former CIA and FBI agent has revealed her top tips for staying safe while traveling, including sleeping on a specific hotel level and avoiding private rentals.
When visiting hotels, Tracy chooses to stay in a room between the third and sixth floors – low enough for emergency access but away from any intruders who might enter on the ground floor, which is “the more accessible “.
If you stay on a higher floor, it will be “difficult to get out quickly”.
Regardless of the floor level, she “locks the room” and “puts the safety lock” on her door.
After locking it, Tracy installs a doorstop to give herself even more security and warns that some hotels may not have them or security latches.
Tracy practices what she preaches. She recently took a trip to Florida and requested to be moved from the first to the fourth floor.
Tracy says safety protocols are now “second nature.”
One day, while traveling for work, her hotel “refused” to move her room to a higher floor, so her solution was to place “towels under the door.”
In one specific country, Tracy noticed that “all the doors in the hotel were to the outside” and that she had to take “extra precautions” because “someone might pull something inside.”
Tracy Walder, 44, worked for the CIA as an officer and for the FBI as a special agent between 2000 and 2005, and learned to take extra precautions while serving overseas.
“My husband, Ben, 44, teases me about it and while it’s unlikely anyone will break in, the reality is that hotel staff have a keycard to get into your room,” Tracy said.
In addition to monitoring the security of her hotel room, Tracy also shares her route with her family using the Panic Button app, which alerts her emergency contacts of her location if pressed.
She’s a big fan of the “important” safety button and loves that it’s free.
Mother-of-one refuses to stay in private rental accommodation and calls it “extremely dangerous and risky” because you are “trusting a stranger” in their home.
She also warns that travelers don’t know who writes reviews of the places.
When traveling, Tracy places AirTag bracelets on her daughter instead of a phone and packs them in all her luggage.
Tracy began adopting her new tricks after a certain trip abroad left her feeling like she might be in danger.
She has a friend who travels alone and was “surprised” to learn how she hadn’t “necessarily thought about her personal safety.”
Her mindset is to assume that when they’re in another country, someone might “know who she is” and “try to hurt her.”
Today, the Dallas-based criminal justice professor shares her best safety tips, including using a doorstop, sharing your route, and downloading a panic button app.
“My hope was to give people all the different variations of the security check and encourage them to use things that they can control or that they already have – without having to buy anything,” he said. she declared.
She often posts videos about child safety on the Internet, the safety equipment she loves, and her comments on controversial current affairs topics.
When she’s not posting videos to her TikTok account, Tracy contributes to national security for News Nation.
She is also the author of The Unexpected Spy.
