Are GOS Profiles are reasonable mitigation for border checks?

catlike

Apparently some countries' border guards force you to unlock your phone at the border. While I could wipe my phone beforehand and restore later, or use a duress PIN, profiles would be a more convenient/less obvious solution. Is that a reasonable approach? I unlock my phone and show just what is visible in that profile? Can I hide the fact that there are other profiles or is that necessary?

DeletedUser495

catlike fact that multiple profiles are run can not be hidden, especially among people who are trained to look for such things. Sensitive material should be removed before border crossing and restored later. They don't look for your family photos, even if you may consider that an invasion of your privacy.

You can further password protect other apps and settings with app like LockLock, which works great
https://github.com/nethical6/LockLock
unlocking which you don't have to consent with, since you have already unlocked your device.

mmobder

It was discussed many times, search for details - limitations, ideas etc

Briefly, fir a knowledgeable personnel, it's visible you have multiple profiles. In it other cases - you can try) I would setup extra non-owner profile for that matter.

LeslieFH

For a cursory search, disabling "Allow user switch" beforehand should work. For a thorough search, they will find the other profiles and require you to unlock them.

If we had a good backup/restore solution, the best way to pass a border check would be to make a backup, wipe the phone, copy some decoy data onto it (Candy Crush, some photos of cats/dogs, no social media), and restore the backup after leaving the border.

Unfortunately, we only have seedvault ;-) so restoring all apps is somewhat cumbersome.

catlike

Thanks for the tips. I suppose wiping and restoring will be the safest option. afaik I already have sufficient backups to do that.

Revliss

What about stenography on random family pictures as a way to store the backup?

daunting7512

The safest option is to have a separate phone for international travel and to make sure information that isn't "travel safe" never touches the device. I should be doing this, but I admit I don't do it anymore. Here's what I do:

Have a separate "Main" and "Travel" user profile. "Main" is for day to day smartphone usage, and "Travel" contains only travel-safe information. Never put any user data on the owner profile.
Before leaving the country, backup the "Main" user profile and delete it.
After returning home, restore "Main" from backup.