Your data and privacy are never more at risk than when you travel; here's how to protect them.
I travel all over the world for my job, and for my hobbies. Although there are still plenty of places I haven't been, I've visited enough foreign countries that I don't deny it when someone calls me a world traveler. Over the years, I've experienced my fair share of foreign spying. I know what it's like to be snooped on.
I'm no longer surprised when I suddenly get gobs of spam from a country I've visited. My best guess is that someone in the country intercepted my email and recorded my email address. I still get porn spam in Arabic and ads for weight loss products in Mandarin. I've had my laptop and USB keys searched at countless borders.
An eye-opening moment: On one trip to an Asia-Pacific country, while I was taking a shower in my hotel room, I saw someone insert a USB key into my unlocked laptop. I yelled and jumped out of the shower, and the intruder ran out of the room, leaving his USB key behind. On it was a remote backdoor Trojan. That someone believed I was significant enough to spy on made me feel pretty important. It also taught me to be much more careful with my laptop.
Besides keeping your eyes and ears open, what else can you do to protect your privacy and data when traveling? After discussing the topic recently with Salo Fajer, CTO of cybersecurity firm Digital Guardian, I put together the list below. After spending just a brief time with Fajer, I realized we shared a lot of the same ideas on protecting our data from foreign adversaries, but he had a few I hadn't thought of.
