James Harrison: How to pick a pocket

oh this is perfect this is working out better than i was expecting um so this is not the most ideal way to sort of explain how pickpocketing works and apply security um but we'll we'll try and muddle through and hopefully i can answer questions that you guys will have and i want works with everyone um [Laughter] well thank you adam um it would take a little more planning on my part to get it done right but uh i i don't think it's impossible so just so you understand what i do is very much uh lojack okay to borrow a phrase from you guys i don't deal with computers i don't deal with uh security cyberside i'm dealing with security on

the physical side which is you know the one thing that always seems to make your jobs harder is dealing with humans afternoon clement how we doing

oh we're getting a bunch of people in here uh well thank you guys all so much for joining me i really appreciate it it's nice to see uh uh faces and names popping up but uh to go back to what i was talking about it is it is the human element that i'm dealing with uh through i i hesitate to use psychology but there is psychology involved uh sleight of hand misdirection or rather direction of attention and just understanding human societal norms if that makes sense i'm going to try and brighten myself up just a little bit hopefully i don't whitewash myself because i'm a pale person and i want to make sure you guys can see

okay that look better i hope it looks better on my end now dealing with pickpocketing if you want to understand the mechanics of it it's pretty simple phone in pocket take two fingers reach in there pull it out that the mechanics of it is not difficult now sometimes you have three fingers sometimes you have to use a finger and thumb but essentially that is pickpocketing the mechanic side what i'm going to try and deal with is why that simple technique allows you to do so many things and also allows you to mess up someone's day when say we're doing a pen test but for now sort of just get into the the nitty gritty everyone always talks

about how do you steal a wallet how do you steal a cell phone and i'll be honest with you i'm going to stay away from the back pocket only because i'm hoping that the 40 of you are are savvy enough to know that having a big fat wallet or your cell phone in your back pocket will either one damage your cell phone or two damage your back with the big wallet and we tend to put the wallet in other pockets for instance uh if you're wearing a blazer like george here is this is my dummy by the way um he's made out of pvc pipe uh and glue that's it and i put throw some towels on him to

give him a butt and i put clothes on them so i know i'm working with someone said hi george you should stop being rude now what we're going to do is uh work with the pockets that this has but a lot of times you want to work with what you're given and uh hoodies are really the way it kind of go because that's what a lot of people wear in in let's just say that when i went to defcon a lot of people wore hoodies but those are the pockets that people put their phones and their wallets in a lot of people don't put them in their back pocket uh mainly out of convenience uh we are

creatures of habit and we are lazy creatures so if we can do something easier and uh more efficient we'll do it because that means we're not wasting energy and we're not wasting time but there comes a sacrifice to that and if we put something in a side pocket because that's convenient and quick that makes my job easier because it's easier to pick the pocket now i'm going to drop the camera down here just so you can kind of get an idea and i'm hoping that i can sort of brighten this up for you guys so it's no longer on my face so hopefully there we go now everyone can see george and bring over just a little bit

now this pocket here is what we're dealing with it's just right here bring this down just a little bit more okay now what's gonna happen is that this pocket is very very simple to reach in and take things um the only thing that makes it difficult would be where their arm is going to go and how how much girth does this target have i want to be polite about that because it's not necessarily always someone whose belly gets in the way but uh muscles can be a an obstacle as well but essentially all i'm doing is when this arm is raised i'm reaching in here i'll push this so you can see these fingers would go in

get a glip and pull it out it's not a terribly difficult technique but we'll go into the mechanics of why it's work and all it is is the mechanics of a jacket the hoodie are as follows when this arm raises this moves away from the body i hope that makes sense when i'm when that reason the jacket moves away from the body and i'm able to reach in i can almost put my whole hand in without you feeling it it's just how it's the way the clothes hang on a person so unless you're wearing uh like a rash guard from jiu jitsu or like cross trainer kind of garb it's gonna fall away from you because

you know layers and reaching in and reaching out of this pocket isn't really that difficult once this arm is raised so again that's the mechanics how do we get that to apply to what we're trying to do and this is where the psychology of it comes in see how we're doing here now the psychology of it is that i want this arm raised out of the way now as a pickpocket entertainer that's easily and easily done all i'm going to do is i'm going to ask you to help me with instruction there there has to be a reason for you to raise your arm and then i give it to you and that's when i have you focus on what

we're doing and i reach into the pocket in the real world it's way easier to just wait this is an opportunistic skill when you have people doing their day-to-day there's always going to be an opportunity where they have to lift their arm up and reach and when they do that that pocket will move away from the body and you can reach in so these are the things to worry about now inside pockets are different but that's a more advanced technique of understanding where their brain is going so we'll just stick with this one for now okay just so you can kind of understand what's going on the arm lifts this goes that this gets pulled out of the pocket

and vice versa now the reason why that stuff works is because it's all biomechanics it's it's really just how the clothes has been draped on us and when we move and just studying body mechanics and understanding where things go on the body now that being said this being an opportunistic skill you want to be able to grab whatever you can get a hold of now to get something i mean that means i have to create the opportunity and being mean about it i can easily just sort of really thud into this person like in the movies like really hard if i want to and all i do is if i'm behind the person walking along my hand would go

into the pocket ready to go and as soon as i feel that arm come back to hit i push in like oh my gosh i am so sorry i did not know that i was gonna run into you i was too busy looking at my phone i'm so sorry there are a lot of different techniques uh that one i'm not a fan of can't do that on stage and clients don't tend to like it when i do that to their customers but i will say this when you don't have to entertain people i've found that a cell phone is the best distraction a person asking questions always works because that gets you off guard i'm in a position where i'm asking you

for help if i ask you for help you feel like you're the superior in that moment your guard sort of goes down a lot but it does so i ask for help can be something simple like directions i'm not understanding my phone i need your help i give the phone to you what is more disarming than that i've given you something that is very important to my life has all my information on there supposedly and you could if you run away with it i'm in trouble so there's a lot of um giving of power or in this situation allows me to take advantage of this if that makes sense and please if i'm not making sense do

ask to me to clarify and uh i'd go on tangents so i apologize if i go a different route than you're expecting so this is in your way the arms of course come up to look at the phone and make sure we're going in the right direction and again we're making the situation happen where the arm is being lifted so i can reach in and grab said item now one of the things i found is that i can get into people's uh personal space i'm going to lift this up so i can sort of see my pretty face and turn this down so i'm not a white ghost screen and then we'll just go back and forth playing

with that okay now so here's here's one of the things i am over six feet tall and i am over 200 pounds i'm a large gentleman and that tends to intimidate some people i have to eliminate that intimidation because i need to get close to you and all i am that requires charisma understanding social situations and humor those three things can get someone off guard so i can do my job now but the one thing that i do have to do because i'm so big and so tall and i want him on my side i have to become uh quote-unquote the damsel in distress if i need his help with the phone i don't walk

right up to this person staring them in the face this is a sign of aggression people are on guard it's not good to really uh understand that the next run into a friend walk up to the with your eyes locked with theirs and see what happens i guarantee you they'll think that they're in trouble or you're angry with them we don't want that when we want to steal stuff we want you to be in a position where you feel safe because that's the best way for it to happen if i offer this person my phone i don't want to look in the eye i'm going to i always attribute it to sort of like when

your dog thinks it's done something wrong you've seen that right where someone will do this and they kind of like they shrink a little bit they're like oh i'm sorry all this kind of stuff so what i do is when i come in as i break i'll break eye contact turn and come in sideways like i'm very i'm trying to make myself as small as possible mainly because that's when you're gonna feel safer because if i am big and tall and aggressive and virtuous and all the rest of it that's better for you to be distracted by than to have close to you so when i'm doing this i have to make eye contact break eye contact come

in sideways not this way but sideways and offer the said item once i've offered said item your hands will go up to grab it and make sure that everything's going right that's when i can put my hand into the pocket to take the item okay so these are just distraction keys it's the same sort of technique that allows you to bring it in and bring it out i also go over in person how when you're sitting at a restaurant the table becomes your pocket how many of you guys and girls and everybody in between that's in the chat uh how many of you have just taken over a table when you're at a restaurant you pull out all your

stuff you lay it out on a table all that kind of stuff i'm sure a lot of you do that's an opportunity for people like me makes my job better and easier because it's all on display so i go over something like that in a different lecture but it is something that i want to bring up just to bring to your attention because if i can make my life easier to take something i will so lunch time is always a good time to try and take things so back to this um i want to explain george for those that want to practice and hopefully for next year i'll be able to come visit we can do this in person

but george is just pvc pipe go to home depot buy a bunch of links get some elbows and some tees and put it all together um there is a t-junction here with a little pipe here for his head i don't bother with the head it's not a big deal um unless i want to be cheeky i'll put a stuffed animal there so you can have a head on him but all this is is that it's just glue on certain spots and other spots i don't put glue like the two shoulders and the and the waist because i wanna i i want to be able to move him around and fold them up makes the life simpler

also i make a square of the feet it's all connected and it's the base and they have two legs that shoot up at the bottom and i wrap the legs and towels put the clothes on put layers so again he has layers and that's how i would practice now if you want to get started in your room right now or at your house or wherever you're at right now it two very simple ways of doing this one get hanger empty out a closet and let that coat hanger hang put a jacket or a hoodie on it and you have a makeshift practice dummy it's easy to reach in and out of pockets off that hanger

it's a great way to at least start practicing and understanding where your body needs to go now you don't have arms inside the dummy quote but you can still move the arm out of the way and when you lift the sleeve up you'll notice that everything moves and it gives you a nice simulation of how clothes hang on a person and the last one and if you don't have a coat hanger i don't know how you wouldn't but sometimes there's just spots where you can practice uh hang a jacket off a chair and put that chair on an elevated surface like a coffee table or a tickle it'll sort of give you the shoulders of

a coat hanger as well but it sort of opens everything around more like a human body and makes it easier to practice and the reason why i say practice is because if you have an interest in this i treat pickpocketing like martial arts you can know about martial arts you can uh be a fan of martial arts but if you ever get into a real fight unless you've practiced all the theory goes out the window so it's the same with pickpocketing if you've never understood how to pick someone's pocket you cannot fully understand how to stop it from happening to you and that's that's how i look at it so if i'm going to help you

understand how to protect yourself from it i feel like you have to know how it sort of works and actually do it on people to make it work okay now one of the things that i will say is that uh cell phones are super easy to practice with um i got me a dummy phone behind that you [Music] um at phone places so they can know what kind of phone you're gonna get and how it feels and all the rest of it um they cost like dollars it's not not a hard unless you work at a phone store you can get one for free but i'll let you decide how your morals go on that

but get yourself a dummy phone you don't want to do it with your real phone these will break uh if you have an extra phone case perfect put that in the pocket so you can practice okay it's what you want to work with know what it's like to feel with it and i prefer not hearing about oh i practiced this weekend in my hotel room and i dropped my phone on the screen cracked i'm not responsible and it's going to make me feel bad if i ever hear about that so do practice uh with a fake phone a dummy phone um whatever you can use a piece of wood shape the phone is so you can get practice of

taking it in and out now there are ways to protect yourself with these items uh one i always recommend with a phone

protector on it because when there's no protector on it oh my god these things fall out of your pocket almost like i just have to walk behind someone it'll fall in my hands kind of disturbing sometimes but if there's a case on it like a otterbox or one of these like super crazy ones those are those are a good deterrent as well because they're bulky and if it's in any kind of pocket it's gonna catch and snag keep in mind this is a opportunistic skill so i'm looking for easier ways to get in so if something looks hard i'm going to look for something easier first so definitely have something on your phone otterbox one of the crazy

super heavy duty cases they all tend to make these difficult they have rubber on them so rubber tends to cap on fabric so definitely do that with those now with uh wallets i myself have two wallets i have the wallet that has the important stuff and i have the wallet that i use when i leave the house like a driver's license a debit card and an id card makes it super thin small and i can keep it in any pocket and it doesn't feel uncomfortable if you're not going to do that and you feel okay having it chock full and everything like that that works too but it doesn't always feel comfortable to have a fat wallet

in your front pocket so i and a lot of us will tend to put those ones in the back pocket as well now if i'm going to be mean i'm not going to waste time trying to pull it out of your back pocket i'm going to take a knife and or a razor blade and just slice the back of your pocket and let it fall out why why do i want to try and get it out when i can just do that but when you are dealing with wallets i always recommend that um you know those broccoli bands you've seen them the blue ones go around broccoli if you put that around the wallet that

you don't want to have come out of your pocket that is a very much a very diy way of making sure that these don't fall out of your pocket or get pulled out without you noticing silly hat just something like that that cost you a bit of broccoli hell go to a grocery store take one off a broccoli ban off the broccoli don't even buy it and walk out i don't think anyone's going to stop you that is the quickest lojack way of making sure that a wallet doesn't come out of your pocket me personally i try to separate into two wallets the important stuff and the stuff that i need to walk around in

the day that being said when it's a nice thin wallet like that i have no problem with that going in my front pocket good i tend to turn it sideways it's harder to come out of the pocket if that makes sense you don't want it going vertical because if it's vertical again it's just it makes it easier to come out of the pocket i don't recommend that you ever put them in your side pockets of your jacket or your hoodie they're just so easy to pull out they really are and when you start practicing you'll notice it's just a frustrating thing that uh we have to accept because like i said we're we're creatures of habit and convenience

we'll throw our keys in that pocket with our id card in that pocket uh wallets cell phones everything of importance tends to go in when we're in a rush i'm just saying that if that's the case and i would recommend not putting it in that pocket those those pockets are usually for hands keep it as such but if you can't whatever you can do to make it more obstructed and in the way the better that's the best deterrent that i can give you without practicing and understanding your surroundings now i'm going to open it up to questions because i know you have them and we're in a great opportunity here where we ask questions and no one's staring at us

like we would if we were in an actual lecture so if you guys and girls and everybody in between don't mind i would appreciate some questions or some uh concerns or any obstacles that you think might be or anything like that if you don't mind start popping them into the chat i would appreciate it uh now one of the things that i will say is that the wallets are not impossible but again deterrence phones are always a frustrating thing uh because no one ever puts those some people just walk with those cases not on there and uh me and ian meyer from uh b-sides orlando we also talked about uh smart watches it's fun how those ones are doing those

things let's see what we got here um brandon is worried about making sure that we're not asking about how to pick pockets better well again it's it's you're asking questions to make sure that you understand how it works and i'm fine with answering those questions because that's how you prepare yourself you don't [Music] you gotta learn how to use a gun to protect yourself with a gun if you don't know how to pick pockets you're not going to protect yourself from picking pockets uh please rally about the smart watches well ian and i talked about this if well at least for uh the iphone and the i watch and the macbook he has his eye

he has his apple watch set up so when it's in the vicinity of his laptop it will open up his laptop so even if the laptop is left on a table there's no way of being able to open it up unless you have that smartwatch if i get the smartwatch off which is not a big deal honestly those rubber band watch uh straps are very easy to take off if i get that off and we can pop the code on one of those little apple watches it opens up your macbook and we get to have some fun so it's not impossible to do so there's a lot of information that goes into a smartwatch that can be exploited if i can get that

off your person uh best pickpocket attempt i experienced was in use a syringe with [Laughter] yeah that is a that's a honestly a valid technique it works exceedingly well mainly because the jacket no longer stays on the person there's two two reasons there's one if you fake that there's something on someone they'll look for it and while they're looking for it that's when you're reaching in pockets and stuff the other is you say that there's something on them let me grab that hoodie i have here and say take it off i know exactly how to clean it off and then they open the jacket like so and they'll hold it so you can see the mask

the pigeon poo that was suggested and while they're holding that up you're reaching in pockets so that one's actually a really honest to god valid technique and you don't have to be that good at stealing things so but thank you for bringing that up uh let's see how often do you have multiple victims to choose from is generally one victim what happens when they are more difficult than the average okay that's a that's a really good question alex so when there are multiple targets sky's the limit you're just doing things to do things now let me make sure i understand the question um it is now uh keep in mind i am a pickpocket entertainer i usually

go to uh events and i will entertain people and then i'll pick one person and then take things from them and give it back that being said if it's just one victim quote unquote um i need to have a distraction that is not open area around them that's why subways work that's why crowded malls work that's why crowded bars and restaurants work other people are sort of doing work for me to make sure that they're in the vicinity of the person the mark as what they're called and it allows me to do my job because that person is distracting them for me i hope that makes sense alex and if i happen to have when they are

more difficult than the average well again it's it's it is an opportunistic skill i am looking for opportunities to borrow things so when i do take something i want it to be easy because that makes my job easy i don't have to worry about george taking a swing at me so if there is more than one target or mark that i want to choose from i'm going to go after the easier one because we don't get noticed we don't get caught security doesn't go up but again if it is the one person and it's extremely hard then we have to change it to make an opportunity happen and that that's a little bit like improv

you have to it's like it's like a uh fight scene with jackie chan jackie chan is using all the different things that are in a particular area to fight with it's the same thing with pickpocketing i'm looking at what opportunities i have to take advantage to try and distract this person so i can get the item that i want there's a lot of improv with pocketing let's see what we got here mike uh i've got mike's question there oh front pocket overseas rubber band that sucker like nobody's business um there are techniques and i have um there is a technique that happens in italy uh the only way i can show you is if i

bring this down turn the light up and show it my pocket and it does work on gene pockets is that you would stick your fingers in here like this and you would work the fabric up like this with your fingers on the outside of the pocket like the inside but the outside of the pocket like where my thumb is touching through the material there fingers are doing this to pull whatever's in the up like so you can try it on yourself it's actually quite funny how much how weirdly little you feel you'll feel it on your fingers but you won't really feel it on the side of your pants it works exceedingly well on pockets like this it's usually used for

like loose like loose in a pocket but that would work exceedingly well on an id card turn that down so i don't just blow up the wash here uh let's see what brandon said if you had to approach someone who was not very friendly or doesn't like people approaching them how would you close the gap okay as an entertainer i have a different approach than what i would do if i had to get something from that person if that person does not want me in their facility then i have to change it but let's say for argument's sake i need to get to this person and i'm doing what's me which is being friendly being charismatic and all the

rest of it i tend to find that people that are angry or grumpy dwarf we'll call them making them feel superior tends to bring their guard down if i ask them a question that they know the answer to and can elaborate on it their guard goes down because they feel like they're important if they feel they're important their ego goes up their guard comes down and i can take advantage of opportunities so just because they're grumpy and they're off playing and they don't want people in the vicinity you have to find an opportunity to make them feel bigger and more important and that surprisingly brings the guard down because they feel bigger than you i hate using that word it's a little

like it's this thing it's more of like a morality thing and i'm i'm trying to find better words to fit this but for the time being i i found that or people tend to want to be the center of attention and show off their knowledge if you can do that with the grumpier person that makes your job a lot easier i hope that sort of helps how do you handle anxiety prior to the act okay uh one of the things uh with with performing it's a little different because i can get away with failing i'm a pickpocket entertainer so if i fail it's part of the act so i gain my confidence from understanding that it

doesn't matter if i get caught but in situations for pen testing clearly the anxiety goes up more it's the same thing with going out on stage with uh competing in a competition all the rest of it your best bet is to distract yourself until the moment you have to do the thing if you sit and think about it for too long you're going to talk yourself out of it and you're going to second-guess yourself just like with everything else in life so it's usually the best thing for myself when i want to make sure that i'm not having a panic attack when i'm gonna go do this is i try to make sure that i distract

myself until i have to do it and really distract yourself not just play on my phone um i find that exercise um for talking with friends all that kind of stuff that helped me and then oh shoot i gotta go do the thing and there's no panic involved because now my job is to go do the same and that's usually what i find helps with that situation um let's see here social distancing is a pickpocket's worst nightmare alex you're not wrong but at the same time you'd be surprised how often i can get away with uh how do i put this delicately i can get away with getting into people's bubble just because i'm social but the other

thing too is that we have lacked human contact for a good ye almost a year if i get someone who says that uh oh you know what let me let do me a favor uh we both have mass on i got a bottle purell let me let help me out with this thing you'd be surprised how often people are more than happy to just to get the human contact so yes it does suck i don't want to give covet to anybody but if i was um more had no morals and very scrupulous you could really take advantage of this situation you really could um bring i think you were saying makes sense thanks for the thorough answer

what about keys techniques for keeping them safe uh one thing is um there was a gentleman out in sweden when i did their talk we talked about his carabiners carabiners are really good when they're not the simple dollar store kind you're the ones that just have the hinge and they open and close like that if you can get a more elaborate one i find those tend to be a good deterrent and again you don't want the janitor pile of keys you want essentials if you need 50 different keys then there's nothing i can say but aside from how that hang around your neck like flavored flavor the clock okay but if you're worried about just

regular keys like just car keys house keys like front pockets tend to be the best place to put them or i would honestly recommend one of those safety backpacks the ones where all the pockets are on the back of the backpack that would be touching only this part and the only way you could get into it is if you took it off your back i found that those tend to be very uh challenging to try open not worth my time i'd rather wait for you to take it off and distract you when you've taken it off and if i have to do that that means i have to put more time and effort into watching you knowing when you're going

to drop the all the kind of stuff but if you want to show 300 to buy one of those backpacks i would recommend either the really complicated carabiners the kind that twist pull down and then spring open their pain in the ass keep them where they dangling you can feel them on your hands on your jeans if you don't want to buy one of those boil it down to your bare essentials and always keep them in your front pants pockets don't put anything in your cargo pants pockets i love getting challenged to take things out of those pockets because they're so easy to take things out of they really are i know they're convenient to just drop stuff in because

they're big and open and wide and everything but it's so easy to take things out of those side pockets they really are especially like the shorts with the the pocket on the thigh when you start putting stuff in that pocket the pocket expands and it'll open up and that pocket spot where you kind of lift up to shove stuff in that stays open and there take things out i got big long fingers and long arms i have no problem reaching for your thigh area on those pockets without looking like i'm doing this can usually get it right about there so don't use those side pockets i know they're convenient and i know that they button up and they got velcro and

everything like that but when those suckers are when they're packed they they just start and make my job so much easier so front pockets are where i definitely recommend um let's see what alex said there sorry someone entered the session i'm just waiting for it there we seem to have an answer for everything uh well it's due to experience alex i have one skill i have one skill that's why i know about this stuff [Music] um okay let's deal with zippers now zippers are interesting i don't have too much in front of me four zippers other than my hoodie but i'll kind of explain how that kind of works it's not it is a good deterrent um

especially when the pocket is chock full of stuff but not impossible so the way a zipper works is is um interesting for me it may not be interesting for you but when i pull on a zipper you have to have pressure in front of the zipper for it to want to open okay same thing goes when you want to pull it otherwise you'll just pull the material the fun thing though is that if you just pinch where the zipper is none of this gets tugged down here all the pressure is where i've pinched the zipper so it no longer becomes impossible to do it if i pinch right where the zipper is and slowly open it

it's extra steps but this is an extra step i'm not worried about i've dealt with those before it's not the end of the world uh buttons because i'm an entertainer i find frustrating they're not impossible and it's kind of fun to get caught when you're popping a button on the back that being said if i didn't about your clothing um a razor blade to that button and that button is gone the the thread behind it is very thin so those though zippers and buttons i don't find to be too tacky just extra steps let's see here uh for keys and carabiner would you clip to belt or gene loop um personally if you want to go super

safe i would go with belt same goes for your um phone holder um and get the con and i would definitely recommend the kind that goes onto the belt that you have to feed the belt through because if things just clip on like you know like um like money clip where it just has a piece of metal that's sort of springy kind of thing uh they'll slip off all the time so it's not hard to slip that off so if you can get something that would clip the whole belt i highly recommend that more than the belt loop because with a carabiner and a belt loop all i gotta do is just squeeze it and tilt it and it comes out

let's see what we got here how difficult is to reinduce the stolen item back to where it was originally that's a good question thank you for that one uh depends on the location so let's say somehow we got the phone out of a jacket pocket the inside one we're going to feel elated we're going to feel like 10 million dollars because it's a hard pocket to get i'm not going to bother trying to put it back in that pocket and my reasoning is this how many times have you reached into a pocket where you knew that you put the pocket and then later you checked the other pockets and that's where it was same thing if i got this out of the

jacket pocket if i can put it back on the person in a different pocket i succeeded because you're not really going to think how did it get there you're just going to think oh man i don't remember putting it there human psychology is a lot of fun with that kind of stuff we tend to forget small details because we don't want to waste space with mundane things we drive ourselves insane with that so we take advantage of that if you get something out of a pocket you find the easiest pocket to put it back in because how many times have you looked for your keys your phone your wallet and it wasn't in the normal pocket

did you think someone put it in a different pocket or did you think that you can't un remember why you put it in that pocket but hey at least i have it so putting it back into the original pocket isn't as difficult as just finding a pocket to put it in i hope that makes sense ways to look like a hard mark good one adam um first off being intimidating is a very good uh deterrent and i don't mean just looking like an um an angry biker i mean uh the way you walk the way you hold yourself there's a confidence in your walk that can and will deter people because they don't want to deal with someone

who looks like they have their life together now that being said um ways to make yourself a hard mark let's see we can boil it down to like when you go on on vacation in a country that is known for pickpockets i.e italy um believe it or not england and uh lately chicago chicago's been having a run of pickpockets lately and i'm really looking forward to reading more about it but to make yourself a hard mark uh essentials is what you've got to boil it down to what you absolutely need to have on you you don't need to have it you really don't i know we put it in there for convenience but you don't need

a purse with uh your little pocket tissues your purell all that kind of different stuff um you want to have your essentials and boil it down as thin and small as possible because if your clothes are baggy it's easier to reach in those pockets so you want those items to be on your person that makes it closer and touching you and if it's a big bulky item there are ways around getting it out of a pocket plus it's inconvenient for you also i definitely recommend utility belts or fanny packs or messenger bags i have a messenger bag and i wear it underneath my jacket over my shirt i can slide it over get all the stuff i need

and then slide it back it usually sits right about here on me my arm is always on it and my jacket is on top of that get into that pocket is difficult because it has zippers that all point inside of my jacket the way it's set up so you can't just reach in and pull it open and all that kind of stuff it's a pain in the butt for anyone but so i definitely recommend a messenger bag i also recommend fanny packs but don't wear it over top of stuff fanny packs are not to be on display they're supposed to be hidden so if you have a long shirt you would wear the fanny pack and then

put the shirt over top of that it's supposed to hide your stuff not make it visible they also have uh belts that you can hide stuff in i don't recommend those because they're a pain in the butt pull stuff out of unless it's something that is direly important that you have on your person but needs to be safe and can fit in a small belt so possibly uh like sd cards or something like that or flash drives but aside from that i don't really recommend the zip belts that they have only because there's not really a lot of stuff that you're going to fit in that now the one thing that i will say is that if we want to go for a more

casual look again essentials that are in one wallet and the stuff that you need to have go in the other wallet and not your travel wallet and the other one stays at home i know it's like an extra step but we're worried about security and steps are what we use now let's see here did we get anything else oh we did uh spain is big also absolutely pete uh i i hope that your question adam it's really just trying to make it less opportunistic or at the very least more steps if i have to go through five different steps to get to something i'm not gonna do it i want three at the most one two three that's it

or one two or even one anything more than that then i know i'm gonna cut it's just way it goes uh let's see i've seen some people wear backpacks at the front um yes and no uh it's not impossible to get stuff out of the front backpack but that's a better deterrent than on your back because i have to deal with your eyes so if i'm if i'm working by myself a backpack on the front i want to deal with but if i have a partner i can happily get stuff out of a front backpack but again it's only if i have a partner i can distract you here while you're standing there and my

friend is on the other side now again doesn't have to be zippers we can just take a razor blade and slice it to open it up but if i can get you to lose your sense of vision here i can do whatever i want here because you're not going to see it right and i don't have to go with the normal stuff i can say a lot of different things to just be annoying and frustrating and all the rest of it so let's see here sorry there we go that was frustrating me for a second so i hope that kind of makes sense uh a backpack in the front is better than a backpack on the back i

will say that uh fanny pack spanx i've got this good job adam uh thinking about how fun it'll be to have five decay while chains bring on 90's back exactly um it's funny um i actually made a comment about wallet chains uh on um uh tick tock and all the people with wallet chains came out of the woodwork to tell me that i was uh not only wrong but i'm also horrible named for saying it but i will say this i've never run into someone who had a chain wallet that was worth stealing and i'll tell you why i say that the majority of people that have the wallet chains either don't have a lot of stuff in

there that is worth taking or two i don't want the consequences of being caught taking it so those those are the two deterrents on a wallet chain that being said a wallet on a chain is not impossible it's just an extra step so if i take a if i can still take a wallet out of your back pocket i just need the extra step to snip the wallet because the wallets just leather i don't care about that contents inside if i snip the wallet you can keep your chain i just wanted the wallet so if i can snip that little end off that was holding on get some tin snips or something equivalent uh it's

it can be done it's just extra steps it just depends on who really i'm my mark is and whether or not i have to get it or am i getting it because it's an opportunity um i think that's my time if i want to get uh don't mention fanny packs in the uk pete if you don't mind sending me a direct message telling me why i'd love to hear why um folks i i think i'm winding down my time i've got probably time to answer one last question if anyone has one you want to throw it at me let me see what we got here

rosa browski entered the session well coming at the end here rob i apologize uh adam thank you i hope that my information has been useful uh i love talking about it i love uh the whole world of pickpoc i mean like i have my own t-shirt saying that i am one so i hope you guys enjoy it um i can be reached at pickpocketmagic gmail.com if you have questions uh if you want to learn more about it by all means you're more than welcome to contact me so please have a good time with the rest of the [Music] conference and i hope i get to meet you all in person not just so i can pick your pockets but

to share this thing that clearly we all have an interest in thank you very very much