What you post while they are deployed matters
Short answer Yes. Phone carriers sell location data. In documented US cases, major carriers sold real-time location to data brokers and bounty hunters. In the EU, GDPR limits this, but carriers still retain location data for up to 12 months and have been repeatedly breached. Your carrier knows where you are. That data does not…
Short answer Six hours is a conservative estimate. With a Cellebrite UFED and an unlocked device, it is faster. What they extract: message history, deleted files, EXIF metadata from photos, browser history, app databases, cloud account access via active sessions. What limits them: a strong alphanumeric passphrase, USB Restricted Mode enabled, Signal with disappearing messages,…
Short answer A personal threat model answers five questions: What are you protecting? From whom? How likely are they to try? What are the consequences if they succeed? How much friction will you actually sustain? Answer these honestly and your tool choices become obvious. Skip them and you will spend effort in the wrong places….
Short answer The airport is too late. By the time you are at the border, every decision that matters has already been made. This checklist works backwards from the border crossing: three weeks before, one week before, 48 hours before, at the border, in-country, returning. Each phase has specific actions. None of them work if…