The phone can be the gateway to all your information and if you decide to go to a protest or demonstration, if the police stop you (or even if your device is stolen), your most precious data can easily fall into the hands of others. . In the United States, in addition, the authorities can seize your device in case of arrest and if they can access its content, they have free access to see all the contacts and start an investigation that can end in a chain of nonsense. For this reason – although it is always a good recommendation – it is always a good idea to protect your phone in the best possible way.
Disable biometric access to the phone
Yes, you are reading it correctly: if you plan to go to a demonstration, the best thing to do is go back in time and recover old ways of accessing the device; Instead of using your finger, face, or iris to access the phone, it is best to reuse the PIN formula or unlock pattern. Isn’t it less safe this way? You may be wondering, and yes, the answer is yes, but Gizmodo reveals a key justification for us and is related to the legal issues that you can be involved in if you are arrested.
Thus, if the police ask the judge to unlock a password-protected device, the detainee is protected by the Fifth Amendment, which protects him from possible incrimination. If the authorities ask you to unlock a device protected by a code, you can simply say no and that the law protects you when making this decision. This does not happen with biometric protection systems that move in more ambiguous terrain and will depend on the discretion of the judge who, ultimately, could force you to unlock a phone protected by TouchID or your face.
If possible, don’t take the phone
In fact, this advice should have been the first on the list and for obvious reasons: a phone that you do not carry cannot fall into the hands of others. But there are good reasons not to take your device to a protest beyond the fact that they can confiscate it: if you make recordings during a demonstration or leave your comments during it, everything you post is automatically linked to the consequences of the protest and this could eventually cause you problems. Does this mean that you must be held incommunicado during the protest?
Not quite. The Verge proposes as an alternative to carry a prepaid phone that does not link you directly as a precautionary measure, or if not, you can always make a backup of the content of the device before leaving home and temporarily erase it to go to the demonstration. Once back, you can restore the data and in case of arrest, no one will be able to analyze your personal information.
Disable voice assistants
If you think that shielding the device with the advice that we have offered you before you are safe, you are wrong and there is still one loose end that you must tie: virtual voice assistants. As you know, by pressing a button with the phone locked you can give orders to the assistant who offer personal information to anyone in possession of the terminal, such as “call mom” or “tell me how to go home”. The way to avoid this circumstance is to disable the possibility that Siri or Google Assistant can be invoked with the screen locked. How to do it?
On the iPhone go to Settings / Siri and Search and there deactivate the Siri option with locked screen; on an Android phone go to Settings / Google Assistant and disable it. With these simple steps you will prevent anyone from accessing private information using your voice.
Encrypts phone content
The last advice we give you is about protecting the content of the phone: it is highly recommended to encrypt the data on the device to prevent anyone from forcing access to the device and accessing all your data. On the iPhone it is activated by default but check that it is so by accessing Settings / FaceID and Code and below all you should see the text Data protection is activated. On an Android you have to go to Settings / Security and location / Advanced / Encryption and credentials / Encrypt phone.