How to protect yourself from phone searches at US borders

Advocates of privacy and digital rights are very much fond of an approach to building travel devices from scratch, but warn that a clean, creaking phone like a burner phone can cause doubt.

“You need to ‘seed’ the device. Use your mobile phone a day or several hours. clean clean. says Matt Mitchell, founder of Cryptoharlem, a security and privacy training and advocacy nonprofit. Many people have several accounts anyway. One ratchet, one healthy, add one trip. ”

Cyr of Amnesty International points out that a true burner phone becomes a “silly” phone. “The advantage we all have on smartphones is that we can communicate in an encrypted way,” Cyr says. “People need to be aware that unencrypted communications are less secure than messages from applications like phones and signals.”

Travel devices do not need to use prepaid SIM cards purchased in cash, but this number is likely linked in most cases, if not all major digital accounts, so you don’t need to share your regular phone number. Buy a SIM card for your trip or use your device only with Wi-Fi.

Travel by main phone

Another approach you can take to protect your device at boundary intersections is to change your primary smartphone before you travel. This includes deleting old photos and messages and saving them elsewhere, cleaning out non-essential apps, deleting some apps entirely, logging out with your main account, or logging out with your travel account.

Mohammed Al-Maskati, director of digital security helplines for rights group Access, says this kind of clean-out should be considered before a trip. “Look at your device and see what apps you need,” he says. “If you don’t need the app, just delete it.”

People should never forget to remove dating apps and anything related to the LGBTQI community, especially if they think Al-Maskati is at high risk of facing device search. And in general, this approach is only safe if you are particularly keen to remove all apps that may be at risk.

You can use your phone as a travel phone by backing up and wiping it, building a travel device with only the apps you really need while traveling, traveling, or restoring it from a backup when you get home. This approach is feasible, but takes time and increases the chances of operational security mistakes and what is called “OPSEC failures.” If you try to delete all old, unwanted apps, and miss one, you’ll be publishing old social media accounts and other historical services that have forgotten your data. Messaging apps can have easy searchable archives dating back several years, Automatically save photos and files Before you know it. Additionally, if you have backed up all your data to the cloud and removed it from your device, but are logged in to a cloud account that supports other services (such as your main Google or Apple account), you may be asked to create data from the cloud for inspection.