Luggage tag privacy notice

A luggage tag is a small public notice about you, hanging on a case in a corridor where strangers walk past. This page is what we think you should and should not write on one.

Last updated: 12 August 2026

Why this page exists

Most luggage tags sold anywhere come with a printed card that has ruled fields for Name, Address, Telephone. People fill them in, because the fields are there. The result is a card, readable by anyone who lifts it, stating a home address alongside a suitcase that is visibly away from that address.

The insert cards we supply are blank on both faces — no ruled fields, no printed labels — for exactly this reason. A blank card asks you to decide what belongs on it instead of prompting you to fill in something that does not.

What to write

Enough to reunite you with the case, and nothing else:

Your surname — a first name adds nothing useful for matching a bag and gives away more than you need to.
A mobile telephone number in international format, so a call works from anywhere.
An email address, which is often the easier route for whoever finds it.

If you want a second line of defence, put a card with the same three details inside the case as well. Outer tags come off; inner cards survive.

A leather luggage tag with the privacy flap lifted, showing a blank insert card with three short lines filled and a fourth line crossed out

What never to write

Do not put any of this on the outside of a case

Your home address. A tag on a case in a hotel corridor tells whoever reads it that the address on it is currently empty, and for roughly how long.
Any identity or travel document number, and no photograph or copy of a document.
Your date of birth. Combined with a surname it is one of the most useful pieces of information an identity fraudster can be handed.
A door code, an alarm code or a key safe code.
Your employer’s name or an internal reference, if you would rather not advertise where you work while you are away from it.
Your flight, itinerary or hotel details, which state exactly where you are and when.

None of this is hypothetical caution. The information most useful to someone with bad intentions is the combination — a surname, a home address and dates of absence, all legible without touching anything.

What the privacy flap does — and does not do

Every Wegmark tag has a hinged leather flap covering the insert card. It means your details are not readable by everyone standing behind you at a belt, and not readable at a glance by someone walking past a case in a corridor.

It is a physical cover, not a security device and not a guarantee of confidentiality. Anyone who picks up the tag can lift it. We do not describe it as protecting you from theft or from anything else, and we would rather you treated it as what it is: a reason not to be casually readable, not a reason to write down more.

We do not print your data

We do not print, engrave, emboss, stamp or otherwise process personal data on your behalf on any product. There is no field anywhere in this shop where you can submit a telephone number, an address or a document number to be applied to an item, and we will decline such a request if it is sent to us by email.

Concretely: your contact details are handwritten by you, on a blank card, and they never pass through our systems at all. There is no order record containing them, nothing to leak, and nothing to subpoena. Every tag ships with spare blank cards, and refill sets of six are sold separately.

Embossing is names only

The optional blind embossing service applies a name or set of initials — maximum 12 characters, Latin letters and spaces. Our systems reject any entry containing a digit, in your browser and again on the server, precisely so that a telephone number or a document number cannot be pressed permanently into an object that then travels through public places.

Note also that an embossed item is personalised and therefore excluded from the 14-day right of withdrawal — see the withdrawal page.

Tags on children’s luggage

If you are labelling a child’s case, put an adult’s mobile number on the card and no child’s name on the outward-facing side. A first name visible on a bag lets a stranger address a child by name, which is worth avoiding for the sake of a slightly harder-to-match suitcase.

Colour coding solves the same problem without naming anyone. The Colour Band Set of 4 assigns a colour per traveller, which children recognise faster than a name anyway.

Products this applies to

This notice is reproduced on the product page of every item it concerns:

Questions about any of this go to support@hmtlederwaren.shop. How we handle personal data generally is set out in the privacy policy.