When I arrive safely I restore from backup and nothing is lost except an hour or so.
Endpoint navigation is not optional for me. I suppose you could pre-login to only those apps, but still, there is nothing that interesting on my phone that I want to spend the energy to wipe, restore, and re-login to a hundred apps.
I use like 2-3 apps for getting around, depending on country. I don't know what you're doing with hundreds.
There’s nothing interesting on my phone either - except keychain, which would give someone access to nearly all my online accounts.
Using an authentication method tied directly to and dependent on my phone seems extremely risky and short sighted. A phone can be lost, fall out your pocket into a toilet, etc and those are just accidents. They also basically have a max life time of five years. What happens when you buy a new phone?
You use 1Password as your authenticator as well? Doesn't that make it not multi-factor if it contains both your password and authentication?
Storing everything in 1 app makes the app a single point of failure. Storing everything on 1 device makes the device a single point of failure. Single point of failure and single factor authentication are different.
There is inconvenience of being deported but frankly risk of giving access to all clouds account to random official is just too high.
There is also risk of them putting you in jail but I am not sure if unblocking phone really mitigate it.
Still, give them the code if you want.
It's pretty unbelievable that you have reduced constitutional rights as a citizen re-entering the country.
If I were I’d tell them the truth that I feel more vulnerable during the chaos of travel and don’t want any risk that a lost or stolen device could leak anything personal.
Would this satisfy them? No idea. Getting stopped at the border is legitimately a single small concern of many more likely scenarios.
1) i don't really have anything to hide / i'm not doing crimes
however i also:
2) don't want to give my unlocked phone to a border force so they can download my entire life
but if i am compelled to unlock a blank phone to a border force:
3) they will suspect me of doing crimes
You're not the first person they've detained who didn't want to bring their real phone with them for totally innocent reasons.
Unfortunately I need to use my phone from time to time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Give_me_the_man_and_I_will_giv...
pretty much every country runs one of these stockyard style mini police states on their borders now. and everyone puts up with it because of "terrorists." meanwhile, literally millions of undocumented people have streamed over the southern border of the US in recent years and how many terror attacks has that resulted in? well ill be damned, zero! so it turns out when the border police tear up your stuff, treat you like human shit and cost you thousands of dollars in hotel and other reservations because they decided they just didnt like the look of you -- it was literally all for nothing! besides the sadistic pleasure that the border police take in hurting people of course. isnt life just so funny like that? hee hee!
most people dont know because the vast majority of people are never pulled aside. but if 80% of people had the experience of being pulled aside, the same one that people have now, even if they all made it through to their destination... the border police would essentially be abolished back to their pre-9/11 status. its gotten completely out of control.
canada is the worst offender when it comes to this. one time they pulled me aside and one by one i literally explained or swatted down every single one of the officers objections. they werent used to someone who was already familiar with how things work. she tries to pull out a paper and pen and ask me all of my destinations to prove that i couldn't afford the trip. and half way through my meticulous and articulate explanation of my plans and stops it became very obvious that i could afford the trip and the clip board kind of melted away off to the side and she chose something else to nit pick me on. ive had canadian border police literally bark at me, sneering, eyebrows slanted at 45 degrees like i was looking at a cartoon character. they really treat you like you arent even human.
edit: if you give a phone call to the canadian border police, i forget the acronym, the first thing you hear is an automated message that swearing and verbal abuse will not be tolerated. IE they have tons of people who make angry phone calls to them after being put through their sadistic border process. how can they not realize that if they dont want people to be mad, they should treat people like human beings. thats the thing, they way they treat you is completely unnecessary. its not like being rude will foil the terrorist.
If you being asked by the border force of the country you are leaving tell them you don't trust the border force of the country you are going to.
More seriously, I would say that the wiped phone has a minimal amount of data in it, which has the advantage that if it is has to be searched, the search time will be minimized.
Are they unreachable? How sure are you? Aren’t you just raising suspicion and acting like a criminal by walking around with wiped devices at International borders? Seems suspicious.
For most people border patrol is not the biggest threat they face when traveling internationally, and OP's steps are very reasonable ones to take against all manner of non-state-sanctioned thefts.
[0] https://global.psu.edu/article/travel-safety-tips-know-you-g...
Purchasing a burner phone, as the article describes, and carrying a wiped personal device are generally seen quite differently.
Generally seen by whom? Do you have a citation for this claim?
I have a very hard time imagining how one would go about telling the difference unless it's a current year flagship smartphone.
By border security. Citation is having worked with ITAR materials in the past, and thus having been required by law to carry clean devices. I had a letter saying my blank phone and laptop were normal. (Only had to use it once, because I was only asked to unlock once.)
> hard time imagining how one would go about telling the difference unless it's a current year flagship smartphone
Any expensive device that doesn't appear to have been purchased for that trip that has zero communications, contacts or other items border security might be curious about will raise eyebrows.
Side note: I still recommend wiping devices and restoring on the other side. But that's quite different from this being best practice. Buying a burner phone is, though that's less and less feasible as we integrate smartphones into our lives.
I wipe and restore.
But I have been questioned twice about whether I plan to sell the devices (they didn’t believe me in either case) and one rather unkind border professional I am pretty sure took me in for further questioning because of the blank phone.