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Comment by eksemplar | Hacker News Reader

Ive kept my account although I've wanted to delete it several times, trimmed it down to make it look like anyone's ordinary life. I sometimes posts pictures from social events I attend, but only clean stuff that looks like something a normal nerdy person would do.

At one point I figured that I might need it to seem normal sometime in the future.

Traveling to the US last year I'm glad I did, passed through the border checkup much easier than my other privacy loving friends who deleted thei social media accounts.

I also kept my gmail address even though I moved to fastmail. Mostly use it for signing up to things and unimportant stuff, but it sure was handy at the airport.

I guess it still exposes some of my life, but it's not like I can ever become anonymous again, since they never delete anything.

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> Traveling to the US last year I'm glad I did, passed through the border checkup much easier than my other privacy loving friends who deleted thei social media accounts.

This is sad. As a US citizen, I have no idea how to even begin fighting crap like this.

Donate to the EFF. They're the only organisation providing solid advice on how to protect yourself against these (IMO unconstitutional) border searches [1]

[1]: https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017

I've been contributing monthly to the EFF (and ACLU, among other organization) for years. And will also encourage others to do so! They're great organizations!

The issue is the EFF and ACLU aren't going to be able to get sweeping legislative changes themselves. We, the constituency, need to be very vocal action as well.

I just feel ignored and dismissed by my Congress Critters.

Are you saying at customs they had you log into Facebook and Gmail?

They look through your electronics, also your laptop. Didn't take them long to clear me though. But I'm a white Scandinavian and my most recent posts to Facebook were about board games and concerts and most of my mails were in Danish or spam about video games.

I mean, they would probably still have cleared me if they had access to the full story, I'm not that much of a deviant. But take the board game nights as an example. A few of my friends smoke weed at those, and even though I haven't done that for 10 years, it's not something I'd want to be associated with on a social media site that a government trawls, so I make sure to keep that part out of the pictures.

On the other hand if you lack these things that everyone is expected to have, they become suspicious.

Wait, you're saying US customs looked through the contents of your laptop and electronics before letting you through? They checked your social media profiles?

Wait, you're saying that you didn't see these kind of stuff? https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/12/14583124/nasa-sidd-bikkan...

Yes.

This is absurd. As an American, I apologize for my government's lack of hospitality toward you. No country has ever treated me like you were treated by mine, nor would I feel fondly toward any that did.

Not really being you - it's called Social Cooling: https://www.socialcooling.com/

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