We all read about the attempts to charge a US Citizen for destruction of evidence for using the distress pin on his GOS phone. So what is safe to do if you know you will be traveling internationally? Are people getting a burner phone and leaving their normal phone at home? What’s to stop you from saying you dont have a phone if you are stopped at a border crossing?

  • yxc999@lemmy.ml
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    3 days ago

    Cloud-backup your phone, factory reset it, set it up again with a phone number, a different messenger app to the one you currently use and download your idk, 20 most recent pictures to your galery and set one as your background.

    1. You will still be able to make phone calls if needed

    2. You will still be able to send messages on for example Telegram even tho you usually use Signal

    3. The phone will not look like a burner as it has some personal content on it

    4. The phone will look personalized and thus less suspicous together with point 3

    Edit: You don’t even have to actually set them up or even open them at all, but maybe even download a shopping list, a notes app, two games, all in all it should take like 10 minutes to make your phone look less suspicous as opposed to the other advice to just factory reset it.

    • Crackhappy@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      Valid advice. But the fact that you wrote all this out is sad. Sad for this land that used to be the land of the free.

      • trilobite@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        I’m starting to believe that governments are the expression of their people. And this applies to every country including mine. Fortunatly, in the west, we still have elections. Lets see what Americans will do at Midterm in Novembre. Americans are those that voted for Trump a second time despite what happened at Capitol Hill. It feels to me that you have lost your bearings of what democracy means. You are the country that is allowing big tech to flourish in the name of capitalism. I used to have respect for America and its people … funny how all the Americans I speak to say “oh, i didnt vote for him …”. Of course by “Americans” i mean the “majority of”.

      • yxc999@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        Jup, it’s so sad that it’s happening and most people either don’t even realize it or are too brainwashed to care. In Germany the police is advised to, if they should have your unlocked phone, set up a Whatsapp-Web instance by quickly scanning the QR-code on your phone to monitor you since they can simply intercept the verification PIN SMS. At least on Signal you can set up a PIN to enter whenever you add a new device.

    • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      Why do that? If they ask you why you have a fully factory reset device with you, just say it’s to keep jackboot thugs like you from being assholes.

      • yxc999@lemmy.ml
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        3 days ago

        Trust me, I would LOVE to insult my way through these assholes, but man, you need to realize noone wants every airport visit to include multiple hours wasted in interrogation. Your comment is absolutely useless.