Important! Major hotel security risk!

[Whitehouse]

If you travel a lot and have valuable with you, you sometimes routinely use the hotel room safe. This chap found out, after forgetting the code, that the hotel staff can open the safe with the default pass code, in this case all zeros. Watch and learn.



If it's that simple to open a safe then it won't be surprising to see things disappear from a safe you thought was secure.

[wolverine]

I don't see why this is a warning to people.

It's a security risk that will always exist and has always existed. Your chances of a break-in from another guest or someone from the outside is relatively low. It very rarely happens. So whether the safe default code is programmed for all zeros or some complicated number, the staff will always have access to your stuff. They aren't going to smash the safe open otherwise if you forget.

It's no different of a security risk than my landlord handing off the management staff a key to my apartment, or giving maintenance a key when I'm away, so they can do work. You just have to trust people.

The best solution is to insure everything that you own and keep valuable documents hidden away in a suitcase when you leave.

[Jimaz]

I stayed at a motel in Kentucky, locked the door, thought nothing of it.

Later I noticed the long screws in the secondary sliding lock had been almost totally unscrewed—not likely to happen by accident. Then I noticed that, although the primary lock appeared locked from the inside, you could still open the door from the outside without a card key! There were no external signs of tampering on the primary lock but it just didn't work. [[Long ago I discovered some such locks can be disabled internally.)

Suspicious, I requested another room.

Sure enough, the secondary sliding lock in the new room had been secured with special Torx screws that require a special screwdriver. Yes, I think that motel had already experienced crooks setting up rooms for burglaries. I never stayed there again.

Never assume that "locking" a door actually locks it. Always test it.