I use a burner phone whenever I leave the country to avoid having deeply personal information in it if I’d ever be asked for a password. Because I don’t want any of my files to be backed up on some government server, I also don’t take any pictures even when there are moments I wish I could.

How easy is it to create your own personal server and forward pictures from your phone over to it? I plan to delete the local images afterward to avoid having them in case a border guard demands my burner phone’s password. Are there any guides that are easy enough to work with using a raspberry pi and a flash drive?

  • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
    11·
    14 hours ago

    A burner phone I sort of understand, but why not take pictures?

    Just get a dedicated camera if you are worried about using a smartphone camera.

    It all seems too extreme, though I don’t know what kind of activities you get up to while travelling.

    As for how to transfer images to your own server, there are several ways.

    If you are planning on using an RPi and a flash drive as the server then it sounds like you are quite out of your depth.

    At a minimum, your server should be using a proper hard drive or SSD for storage, they are far more reliable than a flash drive.

    Then you need to consider your connection to the internet from the server.

    There are ways to setup a server that can be accessed from the internet without exposing it directly to the internet, though they will require some kind of external service provider.

    You can also expose the server directly to the internet, but if you are inexperienced working with networks and computer security I would avoid that.

    If you are absolutely convinced of the need for this paranoid level of security, I would suggest using VeraCrypt, you can create an encrypted file, where you put some fake or less important files, then you can create a hidden volume in the aame file for the actual stuff you want to hide. One password opens the fake volume, another opens the hidden volume, no one can prove the existance of the hidden volume without the password.

    If you however are an average Joe, this level of paranoia is far too excessive, it will make you stand out far more from the crowd and generate more attention from the authorities.

    I apart from using proper storage on a server, I won’t tell you what to do, I will however suggest that your behavior makes you stand out from the crowd and that your attempts to become invisible makes you far more visible.