{"id":24849,"date":"2019-10-28T12:36:38","date_gmt":"2019-10-28T16:36:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/?p=24849"},"modified":"2019-10-28T18:29:10","modified_gmt":"2019-10-28T22:29:10","slug":"electronic-device-security-traveling-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/28\/electronic-device-security-traveling-in-china\/","title":{"rendered":"Electronic device security traveling in China"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>There are a lot of dire warnings about traveling to China with a smartphone and laptop. Examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/uit.stanford.edu\/security\/travel\/high-risk-countries-recommendations\">from Stanford University<\/a><\/li><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.travelandleisure.com\/articles\/how-to-keep-your-mobile-devices-secure\">from Travel and Leisure magazine<\/a>: \u201cWithin an hour of landing in China, there will be malware on your mobile device,\u201d says Dave Anderson, a senior director at Voltage Security in Cupertino, Calif<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Counterexample:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/01\/30\/travel\/china-tips-visas-vpn-phone.html\">nytimes article<\/a> that says download ExpressVPN and be happy<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Is the situation truly riskier than in the U.S.? What special tools do attackers in China have that couldn&#8217;t be deployed at a Starbucks in Peoria?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I&#8217;m not worried about someone from the Chinese government reading all of my email. Any opinions that I have about China and the Chinese government are already published here on this blog (and they&#8217;re mostly wrong! <a href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2003\/06\/04\/the-chinese-car\/\">In 2003, I predicted<\/a> that the Chinese would be able to make and export a basic automobile for $2,000 to $3,000 (at most $4,200 in today&#8217;s mini-dollars). As of 2016, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/tychodefeijter\/2016\/05\/19\/this-is-the-cheapest-car-in-china\/#37d7da822fe0\">there was a $2,400 Chinese four-seat car<\/a>, but it lacks A\/C and other &#8220;basics&#8221;. Today <a href=\"https:\/\/www.geek.com\/tech\/chinese-company-debuts-worlds-cheapest-electric-car-which-costs-less-than-9000-1768135\/\">there is a $9,000 Chinese made four-door electric car.<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I wouldn&#8217;t want someone transferring money out of my online banking accounts, using my credit cards, etc., however. Given two-factor authentication with text messages to my phone, can people truly do that without having control of my mobile number?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Update: Based on Denis&#8217;s comment below, I updated the &#8220;SIM PIN&#8221; on my iPhone away from the Verizon factory default. I hope that is what he meant by &#8220;Make sure your sim is locked.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are a lot of dire warnings about traveling to China with a smartphone and laptop. Examples: from Stanford University from Travel and Leisure magazine: \u201cWithin an hour [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-travel-stories"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Electronic device security traveling in China - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/philip.greenspun.com\/blog\/2019\/10\/28\/electronic-device-security-traveling-in-china\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Electronic device security traveling in China - Philip Greenspun\u2019s Weblog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are a lot of dire warnings about traveling to China with a smartphone and laptop. 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