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Compared to most Western cities, Cairo is safe. You can walk almost anywhere you like, at any time of day or night, so long as you are properly dressed and a little streetwise. Single women should be careful when walking alone at night and should dress modestly. While rape on the street is very rare, harrassment can be aggressive; if dressed for a night on the town, better to take a taxi, even for short distances.
Theft is not a big problem, but it pays to be safe. Readers have reported an increase in theft from locked hotel rooms, even from hotel safes, so think about keeping money and valuables on you or locked in a suitcase. Pickpockets are rare, but do sometimes operate in crowded spots like the metro and on buses. If anything does get stolen go straight to the nearest tourist police.
A longstanding scam is the sale of over-priced trips to Luxor and Aswan. Many of Cairo's budget, and a few mid-range, hotels do a hard sell on packages of three or four days in Upper Egypt, which include accommodation and a boat or felucca(traditional Nile sailing boat) trip. The travel agencies that organise the packages directly offer an all-inclusive price of around US 75 , but your Cairo hotel will ask for more. You could skip the packages altogether: accommodation is usually easy to find in Luxor and Aswan. And if you do want a package, call the agency yourself.
Be aware that fake International Student Identification Cards are sold by scam artists in Downtown Cairo.
