Border Rituals
A guide to surviving customs, airports, and international travel in the Digital Age.
Some time ago, someone asked me: it’s my first time traveling to the United States, is there a risk that they might inspect my phone during airport security? I have nothing to hide, but some people told me that before departing I should completely wipe my phone. Is that true?
A border between states, more than a line drawn on a map, is a laboratory of power and surveillance. Every time we cross customs we enter a liminal zone where our rights as citizens both exist and don’t exist at the same time. And when it comes to privacy, the situation becomes quite delicate.
In those moments, our smartphone becomes a gateway to our entire life: past, present, and future. Photos, chats, wallets, apps, documents, accounts, browsing histories, VPNs. All laid out for agents who are eager to take a look.
Can airport agents inspect your smartphone? Yes, absolutely.
Many jurisdictions now allow such inspections, and the United States is well known for smartphone searches, especially for travelers coming from “high-risk” countries or flagged by the various “counterterrorism” algorithms that activate every time we purchase a flight ticket.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported that in 2024 around 47,000 electronic devices were inspected among international travelers crossing U.S. borders. In just three months, from April to June 2025, CBP searched 14,899 devices — a quarterly record, and the trend has been rising for years, as also noted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Travelers, especially those going abroad, often underestimate the privacy risks related to the many electronic devices we carry with us: smartphones, laptops, USB drives… The forensic tools used today are extremely powerful: data extraction, access to deleted files, metadata, backups, cloud data, histories. In many cases, it takes only a few minutes to clone an entire smartphone.
And there’s more.
Recently, the Trump administration has proposed a new rule requiring foreign tourists from 42 visa-waiver countries to provide their social media history from the past five years as part of the Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA) application process before entering the United States.
The proposal also includes collecting email addresses from the last 10 years, phone numbers from the last five years, and detailed information about immediate family members.
Such measures, extremly invasive for anyone, could prove a nightmare for sex workers and OnlyFans models. There have been cases where OnlyFans models have been qualified as prostitutes in the USA. And if one engaged in acts of prostitutions in the 10 years before requesting entry, it could be refused. Thus, asking for your social network history could mean being denied entry to the USA.
And — of course — airport or customs searches are not the only danger. Criminals are right there, waiting for you to take a selfie: hacking, theft, robbery, device loss… having your phone stolen on the streets could be worse than a border inspection.
As you can see, traveling in the Digital Age can be a big risk. Thankfully, we’re all here to learn how to mitigate or avoid such risks. Let’s see what you can do.
