Stop Making These Airport Mistakes ( #1 Could Land You in Jail!)

Some of these airport mistakes just cost you money, but one of them can land you in a foreign jail for something you didn't even do. In today's video, I cover 10 airport mistakes that even the most experienced travelers get caught by. Let's start with the scariest one. When most of us get to the check-in counter, we hand our suitcases to the gate agent, watch them slap a tag on it, and then walk away. But you're forgetting something super important. There's a smuggling scheme going on where airport insiders peel off the tag from your bag and put it on another suitcase filled with drugs. That means your name and your barcode are now riding on a bag full of narcotics to another country. Grace is one of more than a dozen Canadians who have ended up in jail paying thousands of dollars in legal fees after their bag tags were switched at a Canadian airport. Some of those victims were detained for months in countries where drug trafficking carries extremely harsh penalties. Here's how to protect yourself. Before you walk away from the counter, take a few seconds to take a picture of your packed bag with the tag that the agent put on it with all the numbers clearly visible. That gives you proof of exactly what your bag and your tag looks like so that if something goes wrong, it's easy to clear your name. You can also take a video of your bag being weighed with the weight so that you have proof if anything extra is added to the bag. This baggage tag swap is terrifying, but thankfully, it's pretty rare. The next mistake is the opposite. You'd never think twice about it, but it's catching tons of travelers off guard. You've used the same driver's license to fly for the past 20 years, so it should work again on your next flight, right? Well, not necessarily. This is a mistake that could cost you $45 and your spot in line. As of February, if you show up to security without a real ID compliant license or another accepted ID, the TSA charges a $45 fee to verify you through a system called Confirm ID. That receipt you get is only good for 10 days, which means if you're on a longer trip, you may have to go through the process on the way there and on the way back and pay the fee twice. This process will cause you delays in the airport, and there's no guarantee that they'll let you through at all if they can't verify you. The fix takes five seconds right now. Pull out your license and look for a star in the top corner. If there is a star, then you're compliant, and if there isn't a star, then just travel with your passport until you get your license updated. Quick question, what do you do with your boarding pass after you land? Because most people get this next part very wrong. Most people toss it in the nearest trash can the second they get off the plane, or worse, they post a photo about it online to brag about their trip. If you go on Instagram and search for hashtag boarding pass, over 153,000 results show up. But that little barcode on your boarding pass is like a key to your entire trip. Scammers can decode that barcode on a paper or digital boarding pass, cancel your future flights, book a new reservation on your account, drain your frequent flyer miles, and gather a ton of personal information about you. So never post a photo of it or leave it behind in a seat pocket or the gate trash can. Just take it home with you and then shred it with the rest of your sensitive mail. Now let's fast forward to boarding. You're one of the last groups to board, and the overhead bins are already jam-packed full. So the gate agent grabs your carry-on, tags it, and sends it down to be gate checked. Now your bag is in the belly of the plane, and if you misconnect, you might not see it again for a day or two. And if your medication, your keys, your passport, your chargers were all in that bag, then you got a real problem. When me and Diane started traveling with our baby, I learned to always carry my must-have items on my body, not in my roller bag. The trick is to always put your essentials in something that physically stays with you no matter what. That could be a fanny pack, a travel vest with a bunch of pockets like my Scotty vest, or the personal item that fits under the seat in front of you. Those three things never get gate checked, so your meds and your documents are always within arm's reach. Before we get into a mistake I've personally made many times, hit the like and subscribe button for more videos on how to travel safer and smarter. Okay, so I need to be honest about a flaw of mine. When I get nervous in a conversation with a stranger, I start oversharing details that I probably shouldn't. And the airport is full of friendly strangers, some of whom might ask you some seemingly innocent questions. Things like your name, where you work, where you're headed, you know, typical small talk stuff. But sharing this information can actually backfire like it did for someone who commented on one of my videos. When his long flight landed, he turned on his phone and had a ton of messages from his co-workers asking if he was okay. It turns out that the stranger he was talking to sent his information to a scam network in India. They quickly searched online databases to find out more personal information about him. Then they called his workplace saying he was in trouble and needed money, all while he was unreachable 35,000 feet in the air. This one actually hits close to home for me because someone actually did scam one of my loved ones out of over $9,000, pretending to be me in trouble in a different country. They said I'd been arrested abroad and needed money for bail. After that incident, I'm now extra careful about sharing my personal information with strangers, even if they seem friendly, and I no longer post content on social media about my current trips. I also started using a company called Incogni to erase my personal information from the internet. Your personal information, like your name, address, phone number, financial info, and even health info, is constantly being uploaded to online databases called data brokers. These data brokers sell your information to anyone who is willing to pay for it, including scammers. What Incogni does is it finds these data brokers selling your personal information online, then they file the legal request to get it removed for you. This all happens automatically and requires no work on your part. The key is that Incogni keeps sending these takedown requests for you over and over so that your information doesn't slowly creep back up online. For example, Cogni has successfully removed my information from 649 data brokers and saved me 486 hours of trying to figure out how to do this all by myself manually. That means less of my life is sitting out there for scammers, virtual kidnappers, or stalkers to find and weaponize. You can grab 60% off Incogni today using the link in the discount code untethered at checkout. Big thanks to Incogni for sponsoring this video. You may have heard of this next one called juice jacking, but now it's got a new dirty twist. Imagine your phone's at 8%, you spot an open USB charging port at your gate, and you plug right in without thinking about it. For years, there have been juice jacking warnings saying that hackers could tamper with charging stations so that when you plug in, you send your information directly to them. Those warnings turned out to be mostly hype. That's because with the old version of this juice jacking hack, you actually needed to tap trust this device for it to work. But last year, researchers demonstrated a new version that skips this step. Without getting into the nitty gritties, the hacked charging port actually fakes the trust this device tap for you and quietly pulls your data while it's charging. The TSA put out a fresh warning about plugging into USB ports shortly after this. Apple came out with an update to protect from this hack, but there's still certain Android phones that are vulnerable to it. If you want to be extra careful, just bring your own little wall plug instead of plugging in your USB cord directly. Or better yet, carry your own power bank so that you can safely charge on the go. Speaking of power banks, the next mistake is catching almost everyone off guard in 2026 because the rules are super confusing and they keep changing. It turns out, power banks can be dangerous and start fires on planes like it did in this one. This has prompted a slew of new rules that can vary from airline to airline. But first, the basics have not changed. A power bank has to be carried with you on the plane, never in a checked bag, and most are fine as long as they're rated 100 watt hours or less. But here's the part that trips people up. There's a difference between recharging your power bank and using your power bank to recharge your phone. Southwest, for example, no longer lets you recharge a power bank from the seat's power outlet during a flight. And when the charger is in use, it has to stay in plain sight, not tucked away inside a bag. Some other airlines go even further. On Emirates, you're not allowed to use a power bank to charge your phone once you're on board at all. So the smart move is to charge your phone all the way to 100% before you board and always keep your power bank on you or in your personal item, not in the overhead bin. And there's one more thing worth knowing. Almost all power bank fires have come from traditional lithium-ion batteries and power banks. But there's a new style of power banks called solid-state power banks that are supposed to be more stable and safe. These solid-state power banks aren't super common yet, but I'll link to one that a company called Kuxu sent me to test out. We've only been testing it for a few weeks, but so far, it's my wife's new favorite wireless power bank for charging her phone. Airlines still treat solid-state power banks the same as lithium for now, so you're probably not going to win that argument with a flight attendant. But it's possible that safer batteries might get their own rules down the road. Next, there is one spot in the airport where you're forced to hand over your valuables and then walk away. And thieves know exactly where this is. It's the security line. Think about it. Your laptop, your phone, and your other valuables all go down the x-ray belt and come out the other side, all while you're stuck on the other side waiting to go through the playground. And their classic strategy is a two-person team that slips in line in front of you. One of them stalls the detector, slowly emptying their pockets or setting off the alarm, while their partner slips your valuables off the belt before you can go through and reach them. The fix to this mistake is a simple two-step process. One, don't leave your valuables out in the open in the bins. Pack them all together inside of a zipper pocket before you get to the security line. I like to use my Scotty vest for this, and then I just take off my jacket and throw the whole jacket into the bin. Step two is to avoid pushing your bin with your valuables through the x-ray machine until you're first in line to go through the body scanner. So if you have multiple bins of stuff, your valuables should all be the last bin to go through. That minimizes the amount of time your stuff is out in the open unprotected. Next, there's an art to using bathrooms in the airport, and most people get it wrong. The first mistake is using the closest restroom to your gate before you board. It's always crowded with everyone making that same last-minute stop before boarding. Instead, walk 60 seconds down to the next empty gate. You'll have a much calmer, cleaner experience with a shorter wait. But the bigger mistake is what you do with your bag once you're in the stall. People hang a backpack or purse on the door hook, or they set their bag on the ground near the gap, and a thief can reach over or under and be gone before you can even react. The thief literally catches you with your pants down. To protect your bag, keep it secured between your feet, or if you've got a strap, loop it around your legs so nobody can grab your bag and run. Next is a mistake that some people make on purpose. You book the very last flight of the day so that you can squeeze every minute of fun out of your trip. Sounds pretty smart, right? It feels like a bunch of free bonus hours right up to the time when that flight gets canceled. When you're the last departure and it falls through, there's no later option. That means you're stuck overnight, maybe on the airline's dime, maybe not. When the really matters, book an earlier flight instead. That way you've still got backup departures behind you in case something goes wrong. There's one more huge mistake that travelers make that actually puts their entire suitcase at risk of theft, and most people make it without even realizing it. In this video, I cover the signals that checked luggage thieves use to decide which bags are worth grabbing, and I highly recommend watching it next to keep your luggage safe. Like, subscribe, do the things. Love you. Bye-bye.