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Comment by nicbou | Hacker News Reader

This is a big problem for me as a traveller. If I travel long distance and I lose my phone, I lose access to both my personal and business bank.

I once dropped my phone in a lake (I'm clumsy) and was locked out of most things for a few weeks.

I prefer TOTP for most things. Keepass supports them across platforms, but Aegis has a better experience on mobiles.

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I don't travel much, especially recently, so this may not be worth the hassle for frequent travellers, but I factory reset before going overseas, or use a non-current phone to take overseas.

Whence through customs etc, reinstall only the essential apps for the trip, just remember your passwords or your single password to your password manager.

You can also spread about an encrypted set of instructions amongst free email hosting.

Some people would say it's a hassle, but it keeps customs' nose out of my private life. I'm getting to an age where it's not necessarily weird to have the appearance of barely any online presence.

I have traveled a lot over the past few years, including several times through hostile customs (eg USA). I have never had any of them go through my phone or even ask to see it. And to be quite frank, I don't see what use a border agent or the government would use from my phone that they couldn't get in a different, simpler, less blatant way. I'm not sure what threat model you're fighting against, but it may exist only in your mind.

Same. 50+ countries and I only had to turn my laptop on for the TSA.

It happens. Especially to people on such lists as activists, journalists, etc.

I'm not joking, look it up: https://www.google.com/search?q=phone+unlocked+at+customs

The TSA only cares that the laptop is operable (e.g. not masquerading as something else), not the contents

I've been raided by the police before, so my threat model went up a couple of notches as a result of that.

It's a relatively recent incident and a story I'll be telling in detail at some point soon, I hope.

I’ve heard so many nasty things about customs recently. Down to officers straight up insulting people coming in.

Agree. I bring my phone oversees, but don't have an international plan, so I usually purchase a local SIM card and swap it out. But all my mfa fails then, because it is trying to text my US number!

What 2FA does your bank use? I hear you on the issue... if any site requires me to use a 2FA I can't backup, then I simply don't enable 2FA.

It is baffling to me that banks of all places seem to have the absolute shittiest implementations of 2FA I have ever experienced - if they even have it.

FWIW I use 2FA a lot more now that I discovered Authy, which backs your 2FA tokens (encrypted) to the cloud. There is also 1Auth, I believe the name is, which allows you to do offline encrypted backups.

See my comment elsewhere on this page.

Most banks can supply 'tokens' that generate a random-number that acts as a one-time verification.

https://pic.pimg.tw/abcwithyou/1348639177-1831387207.jpg

They are invaluable if you travel internationally as sometimes verification codes sent by text will be hopelessly out of date by the time you receive them. (If you receive them at all, that is.)

how about taking a fully set up back up phone with you? that's what I do. losing a phone travelling nowadays is in deed an expensive and extremely inconvenient mishap.

I travel by bicycle or motorcycle, so space and weight come at a huge premium. And of course my bank only lets me pair one phone per account.

> I travel by bicycle or motorcycle, so space and weight come at a huge premium.

sure, but being protected from losing your digital prowess comes at a high utility per weight ratio.

> And of course my bank only lets me pair one phone per account.

that's a bummer. I can pair several. just need to scan some qr code.

Replacing the smartphone isn’t the problem. It’s regaining access to things for which the smartphone is the key. If I lose the sim card I’m back to square one.

This is a big part of my threat model.

Before smartphone, if you lose your passport everything goes wrong as well. (and noticing your phone is missing and finding it back is way easier than passport)

Everything? The only thing that goes wrong is being unable to travel internationally, but I think consulates often have a process for issuing emergency documents for even that case?

Try to present a foreign ID without your visa to a US police agent and let me know how it goes.

will provide for an exciting story to tell when you're back but should be resolvable in about 24h pretty much everywhere on the planet.

It's not like this is a common thing to need to do when you're traveling...

The worrying difference for me here is that when I travel, I pull my phone out of my pocket 50 times a day but I only use my passport once or twice a week and can store it safely in between.

I strapped mine to a motorcycle and subjected it to sun, rain and dust for a few months. The GPS interface was baked into the screen, but it kept going. It even flew off the bike at speed once. I never had a phone fail from abuse.

But I had much dumber failures:

- Walk on a log to get a better picture of a lake, slip, and drop the phone in freezing water. Took multiple weeks to regain access to everything.

- The humidity presses buttons in my pocket. Too many passcode attempts, iPhone factory resets itself while abroad. Lost a bunch of unsynced photos that time.

That's cool, although I was referring mostly to the risk of loss or theft, not reliability. Phones are a more generally sought after commodity compared to passports.

Yeah, but if you lose it you won't notice for a week and it has no GPS tracking, nor PIN lock, and it can be harder to replace.

The phone number is scarier than the phone itself, since backup sim cards aren't a thing most people do, and replacement might be slow or impossible till you get back.

I live in the US. Passports are effectively irrelevant for me, even should I travel several thousand miles. Phones… not so much.

And I’m not mentioning the US because its unique in this attribute.

It’s different if you’re a foreign national.

In ‘05 I was traveling in the EU, across the open borders, and got checked by customs agents because of a bombing in, I believe, London. Thought it was weird but, whatever… Later on I pieced together what happened because even if they were only doing spot checks it’s not like I don’t perfectly blend in with Europeans.

A bit of an aside, custom agents absolutely loved my customs stamp from Iraq back then. Well, aside from the Dutch.

The eSim's are available these days so you don't have to wait for new SIM to arrive... if your provider & phone supports this feature.

Don't eSIMs have an even worse failure mode? If the phone itself dies then there's no SIM for you to take out and put into a new phone immediately right? As I understand it you have to first find another phone (with a working line!) to call your provider with, hope that it's within their business hours, and wait on hold for who knows how long, until you finally get it set up? Because of course you don't have anything urgent you need to take care of in the meantime while you wait for your carrier to give you back the keys to your digital life right?

Phone companies don't let you apply for replacement esim through a website?

Maybe some do? I've seen ones that don't.

With Vodafone, I just login on the website and swap the esim. It’s ridiculously straight forward and you can set a sim pin that works across devices so even if someone were to steal the login and try to take your esim, they still need the pin to unlock the sim on the device.

That's better than what I've seen, but that still requires you to find a second phone with existing service? Everyone has 2 spare phones with 1 additional line of service lying around right? Or a computer with internet service I guess.

With a normal SIM all you need is the device you're going to put it into. And a needle/paperclip...

Obviously, you need a second phone to put the sim or esim in. It doesn’t necessarily need service though.

You just need an internet connection to get the QR code for the esim (though I have a paper version I can scan as well). The beauty is I don’t have to swim to the bottom of a lake to get the original phone to get the original sim. I can just scan the piece of paper and put my pin into the new phone. Though I think no matter what, I would have to go online to give the IMEID so the phone will successfully activate.

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