I wonder if I can even find one technical sentence in the article that even makes sense. It is a total mess. There are so many “what about” questions here. What about people who don’t own/carry a smartphone? What about just denying all requested permissions? What about installing the apps then deleting them once you are in the stadium? Or as you say have a burner phone that you leave off? So silly.

When I went to China I got a phone to run WeChat, which I erased and reinstalled once I got back. Android phones are cheap now, you can get something which is quite decent for a couple hundred dollars.

Cut that by a factor of 10. If you need do be connected, but don't care about things like cameras or gaming specks, then I can get you an android phone for the equivalent of about $30.

This is cheap enough to throw in the trash as you board for your flight home.

Connectivity is a slightly larger problem. In some places you can get a prepaid SIM card for less than a dollar, other places need some form of registration. Really depends on the country and local laws.

It's probably possible to go SIM-less and just hop between open hotspots.

> This is cheap enough to throw in the trash as you board for your flight home.

Maybe you know this and it's just an expression, but just in case: never throw electronics in the trash. At the very least the battery is toxic and needs recycling, but other parts of it probably too.

Good luck running even something as "simple" as slack on a $30 dollar Android phone. If new you usually want to throw in at least 150-250$ for an Android phone that doesn't run things with high latency, at least in my experience as a mid-range device user.

I am no smartphone expert but it seems to me there are amazing options in the 200-250 euro range. Things with 8gb RAM, decent CPU, and storage. I would gift itto someone before throwing it away

I was under the impression that you buy a cheap burner for whatever app is required and only use that phone for the required function and not put any content or connect services to it.

If I'm travelling for leisure, I would prefer things like Slack to stay as far away from me as possible. Preferably on my work machine that I left behind on my home continent.

If I travel for work, or if my employer requires me to have Slack (or similar) on my device and with me at all times, then they can provide me with a dedicated device for that purpose and that purpose alone. It's then their problem to worry about operational security associated with having work comms on a device that might have to be compromised by a foreign government.

Even the most basic android phone supports email and text (sms) out of the box. My country enjoys incredibly deep WhatsApp penetration, and subsequently it's become the default mode of communication for almost everyone. WhatsApp runs on almost anything. Back in the day they even had .jar files to download and install on your Symbian dumb phones.

I'm talking here about a "burner" device as it's sometimes called. The minimum viable communicator that you can take with you so that you can keep in touch with friends and family and be reachable in the case of an emergency.

But you make an interesting argument for not needing to go with a new device. A beat-up second-hand mid-ranger from a few years ago will probably work just as well. I have a drawer full of them, and if I don't have any, they can be had for very cheap.

As long as it runs WeChat, does it need to be decent?

Probably being bad is a feature here, because you won't be tempted to use the phone that's infected.

Install it on a cheap Android phone, and "forget to charge" it.

Presumably just backing up your phone, wiping it, installing everything from scratch with a new account would work as well?

At some point few years ago it became practically impossible to do any business in China from the outside without what's app (no idea why as allegedly its banned there). This is around the some time samsung had their "My Knox" feature on their S8 or S9 phone. This feature was like an isolated container for apps, an android equivalent of VM. The purpose was to place your banking and other critical apps there and the normal android system wouldn't be able to access it.

However I found a much better use case is to keep your phone's os secure by putting all dodgy apps in "my knox". This way I could've had what's app and give it access to all my 1 contact I prepared for it etc.

These days I don't know if they still have "my knox" feature on the flagship models as, I decided to get a different phone.

However for going to an autocratic country I would just buy a burner phone (or not go there in the first place).

Xiaomi have a similar feature, where only some specific combination of buttons/fingerprins would unlock the phone into the special mode containing the special apps (so more tailored for stuff you want to hide than the inverse).

Hmm, that certainly sounds… extremely measurable.

Xiaomi isn’t a company I would trust these days.

It still does, it's now called "Secure Folder". There's "Insular" from F-Droid as well.

> Insular

Does anyone else have any experience with this app?

If Whatsapp is a "dodgy app" I can't imagine what non-dodgy apps you might be running on your phone.

How many people are even aware that there is a problem, and among those, how is it realistic and reasonable to expect them to simply "buy a new phone and create a new burner google account (if you use your own you defeat the purpose)"?

Then they can install the apps, blissfully unaware, and suffer the consequences, if any.

> It seems like this would be good practice these days for any international travel.

This also seems like a great use case for privacy focused OSes for unlocked phones. I’ve been trying to get into CalyxOS or GrapheneOS for a while. Just waiting for either to come to the Pixel 7 Pro. I wouldn’t throw it afterwards, but probably wouldn’t connect it to any home networks without nuking it once or twice.