Advice regarding travelling with sensitive information on your phone.

[deleted] I would probably ship the phone to a post office near my hotel and travel with a cheap phone.

I don't think anyone would rather risk losing all that data (+ the device) not to mention the opportunity to intercept the package and tamper with the phone. Seems not worth for me.

88dotorg As soon as you disable multiple users all the data will be deleted.

If there are multiple user profiles, and the owner profile disables the multiple-users toggle and then re-enables the toggle, the secondary profiles are present and entirely operable, with their previous state.

de0u

That's interesting info - always thought it would delete the other profiles and never tried it for fear of that. Then Mr_Black suggestion would be a simple solution for the scenario mentioned here - as long as you set up the profiles so that the sensitive files are stored in secondary profiles.

A follow-up question if i may: Are other profiles forensically visible (I'm not referring to the possibility of extracting data from other profiles, just whether an attacker can tell that there are other profiles than the owner profile)?

Murcielago Are other profiles forensically visible (I'm not referring to the possibility of extracting data from other profiles, just whether an attacker can tell that there are other profiles than the owner profile)?

Yes and unfortunately it's not possible to hide that if someone examines the device.

yore

Ok, thanks for the quick reply.

Still, it may be a possible solution if it's just to withstand a quick visual inspection.

In What countries besides the U.S. are they likely to request looking at your phone upon entering? I would think the best advice thought would be, if you are subject to this, as others mentioned above, to upload all data to a secure cloud, and don't have anything on the phone that you don't want anyone to see. However, the bigger question becomes, how do you know someone hasn't tampered with your phone while in their custody? If something like this occurred, I would be inclined to re-install GOS, and then back up from the cloud.

locked In What countries besides the U.S. are they likely to request looking at your phone upon entering?

Likely? Hard to say.

I suspect many countries can demand... I think this says Canada can: https://www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/travel-voyage/edd-ean-eng.html

Which countries cannot require inspection of device contents?

Hathaway_Noa You should tell us what country it was. Many countries don't have good human rights records these days, including The United States, so saying so does not really say much.

locked this link maybe will interest you.

Hathaway_Noa I like the cloud solution (of a trusted cloud or your own, with an encrypted backup of course) or the hiding profiles idea from de0u.

If you're on a very high threat model or just feel like going way overboard, the safest way would probably either be to just use a secondary phone without sensitive data or fully wipe the phone and use it like a secondary phone during the journey (and only when you're back you restore a backup that you stored at home).

Second to that would be to make a backup on a local encrypted thumb drive or micro SD card that you take with you. Maybe put it in a laptop or camera case so it doesn't raise any suspicion. This way you avoid the security risk by using the cloud.

Not directly related, but if your journey is about holidays, maybe try just taking a cheap dumb phone with you for emergencies and leave your GOS phone at home. This way you can experience a more intense sabbatical kind of holidays and it might be worth it both security wise and for mental relaxation.

Overall it's depending on your threat model, just always make sure you have a plausible situation or story in case you raise suspicion, since your lack of data is unusual.

Hat My country is on that list, but it's not one of the ones that is aggressive about it, nor have I ever heard of it happening to anyone while arriving at the airport.

Do backups on GOS only save Apps and Files(If Selected)? Or do system settings, contacts and such backup too? I only see App Backup and Storage Backup (experimental). In the backup area as tabs.