Privacy and digital rights lawyers prefer to make a traveling device from a large extent scratch, but they take care that a phone that is very clean -suitable, is very much like a burner phone, can cause doubt.
“You have to ‘seed’ the device. Use the phone for a day or even for a few hours. It can’t just be. Clean Clean. It is strange, “Matt Mitchell, the founder of Cryptoharlem, a safety and privacy training and advocacy is called non -profit organization.” My recommendation is to make a finest for the journey, because if they ask you what your profile is, how are you saying that ‘I do not use any social media’? Many people eat something anyway. A shaft, a nutritious -a trip. ,
The sir of Amnesty International, also suggests that a true burner phone will be a “dumb” phone, which will not be able to run apps for encrypted communication. “The advantage of all of us with the smartphone is that you can communicate in an encrypted manner,” says Cyr. “People should be conscious that any non -communicated communication is less safe than a message on an application like a phone call or signal.”
While a travel device does not need to use the prepaid SIM card purchased with cash, it should not share your normal phone number, as this number is probably the most attached to all your major digital accounts. Buy a SIM card for your trip or use the device only on Wi-Fi.
Travel with your primary phone
The other approach you can take to protect your device during border crossing is to modify your primary smartphone before the journey. This includes removing old photos and messages and storing them elsewhere, cleaning non -apps, and either removing some apps completely or logging in with their main accounts and logging back in with travel accounts.
Mohammad al-Masti, a digital security helpline director of Rights Group Access Now, says that people should consider this type of clean-out before traveling. “I will look at my device and see what apps I need,” they say. “If I don’t need the app, I remove it.”
Al-Masses says that he suggests that people especially remember to remove anything related to dating apps and LGBTQI communities, especially if they consider themselves at high risk of facing device search. And generally, this approach is safe only when you are especially hardworking about removing every app that can expose you to risk.
You can use your own phone as a trip phone, by returning it, can erase it, manufacture a travel device, only with apps that you really need to go on your journey while traveling, and then you can restore from backup when you reach home. This approach is notable but time consuming, and it creates more opportunities for operational safety mistakes or known as “OPSEC failed”. If you try to remove all your old, unwanted apps, but remember one, you can highlight an old social media account or other historical service that have forgotten the data in it. Messaging apps can easily have searching archives and you can automatically save photos and files without realizing it. And if you take all your data back to the cloud and remove it from your device, but still lowering other services (such as your main Google or Apple account) and logged into the cloud account, you can be asked to produce data from the cloud for inspection.
