The Art of Invisibility: The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data

by Kevin D. Mitnick

If you don’t want to have any sensitive data available on your hard drive, the choices are: 1. Clean up any sensitive data before you travel and perform a full backup. 2. Leave the data there but encrypt it with a strong key (although some countries may be able to compel you to reveal the key or password). Do not keep the passphrase with you: perhaps give half of the passphrase to a friend outside the United States who cannot be compelled to give it up. 3. Upload the encrypted data to a cloud service, then download and upload as needed. 4. Use a free product such as VeraCrypt to create a hidden encrypted file folder on your hard drive. Again, a foreign government, if it finds the hidden file folder, may be able to force you to reveal the password. 5. Whenever entering your password into your devices, cover yourself and your computer, perhaps with a jacket or other item of clothing, to prevent camera surveillance. 6. Seal your laptop and other devices in a FedEx or other Tyvek envelope and sign it, then put it in the hotel room safe. If the envelope is tampered with, you should notice it. Note, too, that hotel safes aren’t really that safe. You should consider buying a camera device that you can put inside the safe to take a photo of anyone opening it and send the photo via cellular in real time. 7. Best of all, don’t take any risk. Carry your device with you at all times, and don’t let it out of your sight.