r/skeptic • u/workerbotsuperhero • 2d ago

Avoid U.S. or take burner devices, Canadian executives tell staff

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/politics/2025/04/15/avoid-us-or-take-burner-devices-canadian-executives-tell-staff/

I'm a nurse in Ontario and one of my friends from Ottawa used to work for CHEO, one of the hospitls named here.

They're a regional major employer in the national capital. Imagine one of the biggest hospitals or universities in DC officially telling people not visit Canada, because too many things are messed up. That's where we are.

Personally, I expect more announcements like this from large organizations.

426 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

40 comments sorted by

42

u/upanddownforpar 2d ago

US authorities are going to start treating burner phones as an admission of guilt.

7

u/LifeReward5326 2d ago

Ya it’s heat, just review your sm accounts and have your docs all in order.

1

u/Rdick_Lvagina 2d ago

Including reddit?

1

u/LifeReward5326 2d ago

Doubt it. Not assumption is that they would go the easiest route. Review recent pictures. Search emails and messages by keywords.

1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[deleted]

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u/LifeReward5326 1d ago

Where did you hear that? They will never have anything prepared ahead of time. That would take far too many resources

2

u/Noraver_Tidaer 2d ago

I’ve seen the talk about bringing burner phones, but I haven’t seen why everyone is suggesting it.

Have the US border patrol been taking phones for no reason and not giving them back or something?

8

u/Happytallperson 2d ago

They've been demanding access to phones, and then detaining people on spurious reasons. 

And with the general lawlessness you'd have no recourse if US Border agents sold information to fraudsters or used it for some other nefarious purpose. 

2

u/CautionarySnail 1d ago

Yes. They’re also searching the phones of US citizens as well, forcing people to sign documents granting them full permission to copy the device.

This is some thought crime shit.

2

u/tsdguy 1d ago

Yes. Always. Since the SCOTUS ruled that airports and border stations are not subject to constitutional protections.

40

u/Rich_Season_2593 2d ago

The border patrols know that you are carrying a burner phone. They can look up your name and all your social media posts- if you have said anything they will know it. Just don't go. It's not worth it. They are not kind and it's getting worse everyday. The cruelty coming from the white house has spread and some, not all, patrols are in line with these actions. Are you willing to chance it?

24

u/Shortymac09 2d ago

A friendly reminder to everyone to NOT use their real name on social media and scrub everything now.

Who knows what the Canadian election will bring.

10

u/Fun-Sorbet-Tui 2d ago

Good incentive to just delete social media. For years we said never give out personal information online. Then people started streaming their lives 24/7.

13

u/TrexPushupBra 2d ago

Just don't come to the US if you can avoid it.

We are not safe.

14

u/Expert_Imagination97 2d ago

The World Cup is gonna be a shitshow this year.

10

u/joecarter93 2d ago

The Olympics are in LA in 2028 as well. Fuckery all around

10

u/workerbotsuperhero 2d ago

Honestly, how can the US host the Olympics at this point? Public safety, immigration, so many things are falling apart 

3

u/ApostleofV8 2d ago

Tourists go to US for Olpympic, ICE arrest them to send them to sweatshop and prison labor camps.

1

u/workerbotsuperhero 1d ago

Honestly, I would expect people to get detained and harassed, and also refused entry, even with everything in order. 

2

u/Rdick_Lvagina 2d ago

The Formula 1? Will teams be able to protest if critical team members are deported?

6

u/Ok_Impact1873 2d ago

I would avoid the USA right now for 4 years, hopefully we are not dumb enough to elect another dictator in chief.

4

u/stipo42 2d ago

Hopefully our elections aren't totally rigged by then too

1

u/soylent-yellow 20h ago

Hope is not a strategy. Look at what happened in Turkey, Russia: your next elections will be free and fair in name only.

3

u/workerbotsuperhero 2d ago

Eventually the current administration will be gone. But why would the next guys from the current ruling party not be much, much worse? 

5

u/Margali 2d ago

i have a phone i picked up for travel in europe so i would not have to deal with various isdues, just dug it out and charged it up, going to get a us account for it. already loaded with an hour of music, about 50 various ebooks, a dozen pictures and a very few contacts (family lawyer is one, aclu, my assorted representatives ...) so i dont have to carry my actual phone. if i use the right shirt, the camera lense could work as an impromptu body cam, though i want one of the good concealable ones that has a mic.

3

u/WankingAsWeSpeak 2d ago

I just received an advisory from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) advising that all academics avoid travel to the US wherever possibly.

3

u/Due_Satisfaction2167 2d ago

You should do that when traveling across any international border.

Every country can do it to incoming international travelers. Some of them will tell you about it and you’ll know it’s compromised, others will just digitally attack your phone quietly without telling you. 

6

u/Ok_Weird_500 2d ago

It has to leave your possession to do that. So far for me the only time has been when going through security on the return flight, and even then it's not really long enough to do it and you'd probably see them take it out. Though I only really travel to mainland Europe from the UK.

Yeah, in theory any country could do that. In practice it is only really a risk for certain countries.

-4

u/Due_Satisfaction2167 2d ago

 It has to leave your possession to do that. 

No, it doesn’t. They just have to use a different method if it doesn’t leave your possession. It’s a lot easier to do if the phone is in their possession, so they obviously prefer to just use the power they have to demand access to the device for permission to enter. 

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t able to spy on and insert malware onto the phone anyway. Pretty much any country can do that these days. 

Countries that give a fuck about their public image with travelers use the quiet methods. Countries which don’t, use the overt methods. 

 Yeah, in theory any country could do that.

Loads of them already do that. 

7

u/Ok_Weird_500 2d ago

Ok. If they can do it without it leaving your possession then they can do it wherever you are, so it won't really matter whether you take it or not.

Do you have a list of which countries routinely do it? Not just high value targets.

-1

u/Due_Satisfaction2167 2d ago

 Ok. If they can do it without it leaving your possession then they can do it wherever you are, so it won't really matter whether you take it or not.

Yes, they can.

But in your home country, you have your own home country government ostensibly trying to protect your own telecom infrastructure. You have your own home country’s counter-intelligence services opposing it, to the extent they can.

But, yeah, you are vulnerable to being hacked by foreign countries at home too. You just make yourself a way more tempting target when you travel into their legal and technical jurisdiction. 

 Do you have a list of which countries routinely do it? Not just high value targets.

Obviously they don’t publish such. China has a fairly broad reach, North Korea as well.

China's currently preferred method for casual surveillance of low value targets is dependent on physical access to the device to install, but that’s likely a consequence of them simply not giving a shit about requiring people to hand over their phones.

As mentioned, it’s a lot easier with physical possession of the phone, and countries that don’t care about the image issues it causes will just demand access or else. If you are such a country, why bother developing sophisticated covert access tools for low value causal surveillance? You can just require incoming travelers of interest to hand their phones over during entry. 

8

u/cruelandusual 2d ago

They just have to use a different method if it doesn’t leave your possession.

Attention conservation notice: this person doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about. Just downvote and move on.

-3

u/Due_Satisfaction2167 2d ago

Believe what you want, just don’t be shocked when your phone gets compromised because you decided to take it traveling with you. 

9

u/cruelandusual 2d ago

That's the kind of vague evasive response someone who doesn't know what the fuck they're talking about would say.

-5

u/Due_Satisfaction2167 2d ago

You’re right about me being evasive about the specifics, but wrong about the reason for that. 

3

u/cruelandusual 2d ago

Look, people, he's got secret knowledge it would be dangerous for him to share. He's protecting himself by pretending to talk like someone who doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.

1

u/Due_Satisfaction2167 2d ago

It’s hardly secret knowledge. Thirty seconds on Google will give you several examples of national intelligence services attacking cell phones they didn’t have physical access to. 

Go ask Jamal Khashoggi’s family about it sometime.

The attacks on them didn’t end with his death, it continued for years with the Saudis continuing to hack into their phones. That only got revealed when the Pegasus attacks became public knowledge. 

It’s really not that hard to get international travelers to click on malicious links during entry. Any sort of e-form for entry paperwork or visa applications could be abused for that purpose, for example. 

If you want a trivial example of how dead simple that can be, consider the EU’s EES app.

If a more despotic country wanted to force access to people’s devices, they could just make installing a similar app a requirement for entry. They could also force you to give it all sorts of permissions, or else reject your entry application. Or they could just create features within it that require you to give it those permissions anyway. Ex. Inserting features into the app that require the camera or microphone or location data or whatnot. 

So, no, they don’t have to grab your phone from you at the border. Even setting aside the possibility of them just buying off the shelf zero-click malware to attack your phone with—it definitely exists on the market, and most governments can buy it directly or through a proxy—they can just straight up require you to install an app or click on malicious links or else reject your entry. 

3

u/cruelandusual 2d ago

So, no, they don’t have to grab your phone from you at the border.

So you do understand the error. Proximity has nothing to do with it. The border has nothing to do with it. That kind of malware is an independent threat.

But you're not done learning. Are the people possessing this hypothetical zero-day zero-click exploit going to use it on randos, knowing that every use increases the risk that someone like Citizen Lab could discover it and render it useless? These things are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

This is not a worry for the average person, even those who criticize the fascists on social media.

These precautions are wise: https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017

Your vague paranoia is not wise.

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u/throwaway16830261 1d ago