5 travel security tips for the slightly paranoid

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Disclaimer: This post is for people who don’t like to be watched or tapped. Is that paranoid?

We do quite a lot to make our homes as comfortable and safe as we want them to be. Some people even choose to work from home to enjoy that comfort all day long. But even telecommuters sometimes travel, trading that comfort — and security — for the chance to visit a new place. At Security Analyst Summit 2019, Marco Preuss and Ariel Jungheit of Kaspersky Lab’s Global Research and Analysis Team gave a talk on protecting your privacy while traveling. Here’s a short recap of this talk, summarized into five travel security tips.

1. Never leave your belongings unattended

Captain Obvious is here to remind you that leaving your backpack unattended in the airport for a minute or two can result in it being physically destroyed by security guards.

It’s not just about airports, though. Keep the things that matter to you (such as your phone, your laptop, and so on) with you, at all times, wherever you go. Yes, take all of your gear when leaving your room in the hotel. No, don’t leave your laptop on the table in the café if you need to go to a restroom. It should go without saying that all your devices need to be password protected, and locked when not in use.

2. Make sure your devices are encrypted

Even if you carry all of your stuff with you all of the time, your devices can still be stolen. Yes, using high quality antitheft backpacks helps, but it doesn’t guarantee anything. And we all know that the information on the device is usually worth significantly more than the device itself, so it’s the information you need to protect the most. That’s why you need to make sure that the entire storage unit in your device is encrypted.

Devices with the latest versions of Android are encrypted by default, and so are iOS devices protected with a passcode or password. Click here to learn how to turn on full disk encryption, aka BitLocker, for Windows. And here to learn how to turn on the same — FileVault — for macOS.

3. Learn how to find bugs and hidden cameras and fool them

Heard any creepy stories about hidden cameras in Airbnbs lately? It’s still happening, and you never know who’ll be the next victim. And if you happen to be a businessperson, a politician, a human rights activist, or a journalist, someone may try to set up hidden microphones, or bugs, in your hotel room or rental apartment to eavesdrop on you.

Fortunately, finding hidden surveillance devices is not that hard. You’ll need a small tool that incorporates a radio frequency scanner, which enables you to find sources emitting electromagnetic waves (which wireless bugs and cameras usually do), and a combination of light-emitting diodes and a red glass to look for hidden cameras.

The latter is possible simply because a camera lens reflects light significantly better than other surfaces do, and that is why using the aforementioned gear you’ll see a bright red dot if you point light from diodes at the camera and look toward it through the red glass. Such devices aren’t awfully expensive, you can find them in online stores for less than $50.

Also, if cameras that use infrared illumination are in the vicinity, you can spot them using your phone; cameras in mobile phones can detect infrared emission (but keep in mind that some phones, for example, iPhones, have too strong an infrared filter in their cameras for this trick).

These techniques won’t find hidden wired microphones, but at least you can easily fool them using the sound of water running from the tap or just some noise that can be produced using services such as Noisli. Background noise nearly ruins all recordings, making it safe (most likely) to communicate in your room.

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