Tag Archive for: Burner

Bring a burner to the Olympics, and other mobile device travel safety tips

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Image: iStock/LDProd

You’ve probably heard some of the commonly circulated advisories for athletes traveling to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing this year: Bring a burner phone and don’t log into any personal accounts. That’s good advice for athletes and non athletes alike, no matter where they’re traveling.

Knowing how to protect yourself properly requires knowing a bit about the threats you’re likely to face, so what should olympians, and the rest of us, plan to be wary of in China and other international destinations?

Aubrey Turner, executive advisor at Ping Identity, said spying and spyware in China are definitely a concern, but there’s more to that “bring a burner” line than just concerns over Chinese government spying. “Who knows you better than your smartphone? Think of all the sensitive data, sensitive memories, the secrets, passwords, all that stuff,” Turner warned.

“[Your device is] a living history of you. Do you want to risk that potentially being compromised?”

Cyberthreats to Olympic travelers in China

Due to COVID-19, the Olympic games in Beijing are going to be relatively spectator-free. There aren’t any generally available tickets, and only Chinese citizens will be allowed to procure the few that are selectively available. With that in mind, if you’re traveling to Beijing later this week you probably have a professional reason to be there, so it is important to be aware of threats you might encounter while visiting.

Aside from concerns about Chinese spying, Turner said that the very nature of a big event creates a target-rich environment for criminals to take advantage of. “With the Olympics you’ve got a lot of people congregating in one place for one event. So certainly, it’ll be a target-rich environment for cyber crime, people will be distracted by the games, and the like,” Turner said.

SEE: BYOD Approval Form (TechRepublic Premium)

The possibility of theft means that anyone traveling to the games should be acutely aware of physical security to prevent a device, memory card or other sensitive piece of data storage hardware vanishing from a pocket.

In addition to pickpockets and government spying, there’s…

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FBI asks athletes to use burner phones during Beijing Winter Olympics

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FBI asks athletes to use burner phones during Beijing Winter Olympics | Security Magazine




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How a Burner Identity Protects Your Inbox, Phone, and Cards

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Between vaccine appointment notifications, store pickups, online food ordering, and a general increase in online ordering, I feel like I’ve created three times as many online accounts in the past 18 months than I did in all previous years combined.

Handing out any sort of personal information, whether it’s an email address or a phone number, can lead to spam, data breaches, or harassment. More abstractly, it can also enable tracking by data brokers—companies that take identifiable bits of data, including phone numbers, email addresses, and device-specific identifiers (such as a browser fingerprint or device ID that’s linked to a phone or computer) and then aggregate that data into a marketing profile. One way to protect your personal details from both individuals and corporations is to use alternate details, which you can generate through a number of tools. These “burner” identity tools create disposable email addresses, credit card numbers, and phone numbers, all of which can help protect your main accounts while you do just about anything online.

Private email forwarding: SimpleLogin

A screen shot of the Simple Login app dashboard where the user can create and organize multiple alias email addresses.

If you spend a lot of time online, you likely have dozens of accounts spread across the internet, with sites and services ranging from retail stores you’ve shopped at once to random apps that require your email address to use. You’ve probably handed that email address to plumbers, car salespeople, social networks, and countless others who may have gone on to spam your inbox.

Over the years, I’ve taken two approaches to managing the situation: creating a free email address explicitly for shopping (Gmail, Outlook, ProtonMail, and the like all work fine for this purpose) and using email forwarding to obfuscate that address so I can pull the plug if spam starts coming in.

Email-forwarding services—I like SimpleLogin, which generates a nonsense email address, such as [email protected]—forward any emails sent to that address to your real inbox. If an account gets too much spam, you can block it and start over with a new email address from your forwarding service. This approach is great for shopping, where you may need an email receipt for only a few weeks, or company…

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