As a seasoned solo traveler, I am well accustomed to being on guard against potential harm while in a new country or location. However, on occasion, I have been guilty of being a bit too naïve and trusting of seemingly kind strangers and am lucky that I have never been caught up in a hairy situation that I couldn’t escape.

Once in an undisclosed city, I visited a rooftop bar solo at a hotel where I had previously stayed. The bartender saw me standing at the end of the bar and immediately asked if he had met me before. I remembered him and assumed his question was genuine. I began gushing about how much I loved the city and was surprised he remembered me months after my first visit. He quickly asked me how much money I made and began trying to convince me to move to the city to work in the service industry for a much higher salary. He also asked if I wanted to hang out after work with him and his coworkers at another bar since I was alone. When I agreed, he began sliding me so many free drinks throughout the evening that I began passing them to other patrons. At the second location, his female coworkers were making conversation with me, asking me where I was staying for the week and acting seemingly friendly. When he sat down and asked me if I lived alone (I had a roommate at the time) and how long ago I had previously visited his bar, he essentially lost interest in the conversation and walked away to talk to his friends. I overheard him relaying to his friends what I said about my job and living situation, but I internalized the situation as him finding me boring and tried to shrug it off. At the end of the night, I began requesting an Uber on my phone, but one of the women stopped me and insisted I let one of the males drive me to my Airbnb. When I declined an invitation to go to a third bar with one of the men because it was already 2:00 in the morning and I wasn’t a complete fool, they became rude and abruptly told me to find a ride home. So I did.

My feelings were somewhat hurt, and I thought I had annoyed them or done something to make them lose interest in me as a person due to my nature. I assumed they were just jerks looking for a good time and I was not what they had in mind. When I spoke to others about the incident when I got home, however, they were taken aback by the situation and told me that they suspected there could have been more factors at play like that they were potentially sizing me up as a potential trafficking victim. Since I wasn’t as pliable as they would have liked, I may have saved myself from becoming a victim. I became curious after this incident and began researching more on the topic of human trafficking to educate myself.

Unlike what you see in movies like Taken, human trafficking is usually not as sudden or initially violent as being abducted on the street by complete strangers dressed in all black and wearing ski masks. In fact, a large percentage of human trafficking victims knew their traffickers beforehand, with traffickers being family, friends, local business owners, romantic partners and even government officials and business executives. Building a bond with potential victims is a common tactic traffickers use to groom and gain trust in order to make exploiting them for commercial sex or labor easier. Manipulation is what blindsides and traps victims, as well as makes it harder for them to escape. Surprisingly to most, human trafficking is often taking place in plain sight and can occur in restaurants, construction companies, factories and in victims’ homes – not just across borders or in industries flying under the radar.

According to the National Human Trafficking Hotline, human trafficking is defined as “the force, fraud or coercion to compel a person into commercial sex acts or labor services against his or her will.” A few red flags of relationships or job opportunities that may be trafficking wolves in sheep’s clothing are as follows:

• Promises that sound too good to be true very early on (high pay, promotions, gifts, flattery, luxury vacations, etc.)
• Feeling pressured to quickly make a decision on the opportunity/relationship in question
• Attempts at isolating you from family, friends or support systems
• Monitoring your finances and whereabouts
• Boundary pushing, including sexual acts
• Possessive, domineering or aggressive behavior to instill fear or intimidation in a victim

How do you protect yourself against trafficking while traveling domestically or abroad? Below are some tips from the National Human Trafficking Hotline website (humantraffickinghotline.org) to help you keep traffickers at bay.

• Listen to your intuition for any signs of discomfort. Although your intuition could be wrong, the alternative is much worse.
• Share your itinerary and/or location with loved ones while on the road.
• Carry identification documents with you at all times.
• Have emergency contact information on hand and learn how to contact emergency services in the country to which you’re traveling.
• Have a back-up map of your destination in case cell phone service is spotty.
• Do not provide any sensitive information to suspicious individuals or employers.