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Comment by Hamuko | Hacker News Reader

Does the US border check still want all of your social media accounts and a scan of your phone and laptop contents? I've maintained US on my list of countries that I do not want to visit because they seem to want all of my personal data just to get into the country.

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Social Media accounts - yes, I was surprised to see that on my visa form 2 years ago. It wasn’t there 12 years ago when I got my previous one.

Phone scanning &laptop - it never happened to me, and I’ve been to US 20 times, coming from Poland. But it sucks that this is always in cards :/

> Social Media accounts - yes, I was surprised to see that on my visa form 2 years ago.

Is that part of the ESTA questions these days? I have heard reports but couldn't find a screenshot or similar.

Yes. It’s optional. Even if you don’t answer they still do a brief look. I had a “ Public Safety Professional in the Law Enforcement industry from Washington DC-Baltimore Area” look at my linkedin when I got my latest ESTA a few weeks ago. Not sure if that’s because it had been 18 months since my previous one expired.

Its not guaranteed they will ask but yes they still do sometimes. Its just luck of the border agent draw.

Luck and not behaving very Hispanic/Arab/Iranian. If you happen to behave like that, suddenly luck gets to be on your side.

Source: Hispanic that used to travel a lot the US and always got VERY LUCKY! (I should have bought Powerball in the US, for some reason being in the USA gave me luck.

Yeah I understand that. I was trying to put it nicely as talking about US immigration and border patrol policies make me very sad to be from the US.

It’s a complex issue but at the end of the day current policies end with people not being treated like humans.

My wife is from another country and the mental tax that going through the US immigration system has had on us took two years to recover from. The entire system is meant to be punitive and humiliating.

None of that information was required for entry into the US, that has never been the policy.

What about in practice?

This has never happened to me or any if the couple of dozens of people I know who travelled to the US (this was all under ESTA though, maybe they ask for all of it if you need to apply for a visa)

They ask you when you fill in esta. It’s optional, but implied you should provide it.

The latest version of the ESTA form make it almost impossible to know that these fields are not mandatory. Dark pattern can also be mastered by administration.

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