> It might raise some suspicion if you unlocked your phone and they discovered you were logged out of everything, and there was nothing on the phone.

There are countries[0] I travel to where that’s exactly what they find, essentially a freshly wiped phone. Hasn’t raised suspicion yet.

[0] it’s also how I travel to certain security conferences. Buy a used/refurbished device before, use for duration of event, sell immediately after.

> sell [device] immediately after

I've heard people say that if their laptop or phone were searched out of their sight by border officials, they'd sell it afterward.

But is it ethical? I think this meat might be contaminated; I'm not going to risk eating it, so I'll sell it.

I'd consider it my lucky day and auction it off to security researchers.

Sorry if I started the discussion provocatively. I'm thinking that there should be an alternative to throwing a $1000+ device in the garbage or passing the (potential) problem onto someone else. I don't know if there are any other alternatives, but I wanted to have a discussion from that angle.

Snowden is working on this I think: https://www.fastcompany.com/40466986/edward-snowden-bunnie-h...

Sorry, I probably was too sensitive to the reply. Mea culpa.

> I don't know if there are any other alternatives

In my opinion, there will likely never be anything to ensure nothing was done, hence why (well that plus the example you gave) I incorrectly assumed you were backhandedly making an insult rather than asking for a real discussion on it.

You're doing it, do you think it's ethical? If so, why?

(I actually don't care, but your response was ridiculous and I noticed you avoided answering.)

Would you please stop posting uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments to HN? You've done this a fair bit, and it violates the spirit of this site, as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html.

Your comment would be fine with just the first sentence.

Dang, I respect you and the work you do here, and I really value the HN site. I never set out to post uncivil and/or unsubstantive comments, and when I do I usually delete them or at least add an edit or reply to soften them. And if somebody calls me out on something I check myself, and apologise if I think I messed up.

I started to write a whole long thing defending my previous posts but I stopped myself. I did add up all the points from my most recent 10 comments, the total is 17. I'm having a bad run at average 1.7 points. So, yes, you're absolutely right, and I'll try to do better.

(There was one exception to my policy that happened recently, where I snarked at some person who was complaining about how hard it is for white men to speak their truth in silicon valley, from an account with a racial pejorative for username. My comment got flagged. Rightly so.)

I consider myself a hacker, I hope I'm a net benefit to the community, and I'd really like to see HN stay high quality. I did reread both the guidelines and the welcome page you linked and I am "on-board".

But, ...

Just kidding, no "but".

Sorry for the noise dude, I'll try to do better.

Thanks! I really appreciate this.

Cheers :-)