7 Tips for Security and Privacy When Traveling

When traveling, there are some precautions you may want to take.

1. To prevent data exchange if you are going to use public USB charging stations or charge using devices that are not your own, you can get a USB condom. This will allow your devices to charge but will turn off the data send/receive ports so no data can be exchanged.
2. Don’t use airline mileage programs. If you use airline mileage programs, they may be putting personally identifiable information on your boarding pass (1).
3. Don’t post online if you are going out of town, ask your friends and family to not post online as well if you are going out of town, and don’t post photos of your trip until you get back home. The reason for this is potential burglars may have fake social accounts set up to monitor your activity to find out when you are going out of town so they can break into your home.
4. Secure your garage door if you have one. When you go out of town you can unplug your garage door opener. However, that won’t stop a burglar from using a fishing method to open it or stop a burglar who has entered the home, using a different method, from opening the garage door from the inside and then using the garage as a loading dock. To guard against this you can instead lock your garage door track using a lockable latch or c-clamps. If it doesn’t have a hole for a lock you can drill a hole in the track just above one of the rollers.
5. If using a hotel safe, you can put your belongings in a sealed FedEx or other Tyvek envelope. That way if you find the seal is broken, you will know you have been robbed. You may also want to get a camera to put in the safe that will take a photo of anyone opening it and send the photo via cellular since hotel safes are not very secure (2).
6. Turn off the Wi-Fi on your devices when not being used. Any device that has a MAC address can be tracked, but it can only be tracked when the Wi-Fi is on. Computers, tablets, and smart phones all have MAC addresses.
7. Encrypt your smart phone and tablets and restart your mobile devices before going through a security checkpoint if you have a fingerprint or face recognition enabled. This is because it will then require you to enter your passcode instead, and if it is encrypted, it is much more difficult to bypass. A fingerprint can easily be bypassed (3).

References:

1. krebsonsecurity.com/2015/10/whats-in-a-boarding-pass-barcode-a-lot
2. Mitnick, Kevin D. The Art of Invisibility: The World’s Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data. Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
3. theverge.com/2016/5/2/11540962/iphone-samsung-fingerprint-duplicate-hack-security