You lost your phone in a hostile country.
If your phone is gone and you cannot remotely wipe it before someone with real resources accesses it, assume everything on it is compromised.
-
-
The FBI seized a Washington Post reporter’s phone. It contained 1,200 Signal sources.
On January 14, 2026, the FBI seized the phone, laptops, and Garmin watch of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson as part of a leak investigation.
-
Hong Kong just made it a crime to refuse to unlock your device at the border.
Hong Kong passed a law on March 23, 2026 making it a criminal offence to refuse police access to your phone or laptop.
-
Encrypted messaging apps for travel into hostile regions.
End-to-end encrypted by default for all messages and calls.
-
GDPR compliance for solo lawyers and small law firms.
A record of processing activities.
-
Your internet provider logs every site you visit.
DNS queries: every domain name your device looks up.
-
Digital security for diplomats and expats in high-risk countries.
In a short deployment, you use a travel device and leave.
-
Incognito mode doesn’t hide what you think it does.
When you open an incognito window, your browser stops saving three things locally: your history, your cookies, your form data.
-
How to secure communications in the field. NGO field guide.
Hotel Wi-Fi, conference networks, local SIM data, shared internet in partner offices: all of these are environments where traffic can be read by parties you have no visibility into.
-
Your phone carrier sells your location data.
In 2018, a Missouri sheriff used a carrier-data reseller called Securus to track the location of a judge and a fellow officer without a warrant.
