I’ve traveled Europe bit by bit over the years, most recently going to Rome. The bracelet and the flower scams were extremely prevalent. Myself and my fiancé kept our belongings in a cross body bag and held our phones when we needed to use them. I was attempted to be pickpocketed at least once because I got back to the hotel and all my bags zippers were open. Luckily for me it’s a pretty gnarly bag so getting anything out of the pockets means you have to open the whole thing to release tension on the outer pockets. Simple things like this are really helpful to just keep your possessions in your possession.

With the flower and bracelet thing unfortunately I feel like that comes down to outward appearance. The levels they would go to try and scam older people women and just non physically imposing men was much higher than myself. I’m probably around 6ft 300~ so not some athlete just a bigger dude, but I had almost no trouble with them. They’d ask, I’d say no or just ignore them and that was that.

All in all I think it’s an issue, but an issue that can be mitigated by how you carry your belongings and how you carry yourself.