Important info about phone wallets at borders

For sure, don't bring a phone wallet loaded with serious cash into the USA. If you roll in with, say, 100k in BTC on your phone and you don't declare it, you could end up losing all that. Just make sure you’re cautious about crossing borders.

This is scary, they even demand for accessing deleted content in your devices. I think it's better to buy cheap new device when someone come to USA, so you will not have a problem if you get asked about sensitive contents you have deleted. I still remember people were discussing about bring hardware wallet to the airport, but after I read this, better to destroy or leave it in hidden place.

Very possible some people can have such huge amount of money on their wallet but that is foolishness because mobile wallets are online wallets. I can not have such amount on an online wallet including laptops that I connect online. I will prefer a cold wallet for such amount of money. Thanks for letting us know this. But this privacy invasion.

At least in the USA, as previously discussed in the long running thread about this CBP is NOT allowed to randomly search your devices for no reason. They can only do that as part of a chain of evidence started by previous issues with your replies to questions or as part of a previously started ongoing investigation. Other countries may have different guidelines but most Western ones follow the same rules as the US. When it happens they are looking for very specific things such as names & contact information in cases of suspected drugs & money laundering (in which case you were already caught with drugs or undeclared cash), illegal immigration, human trafficking, illegal pornography, or reported espionage. 'Carrying' crypto is no different than credit/debit cards - and CBP is NOT allowed to run a credit limit check on those. The rules covering what must be declared are very specific: Cash (coin or paper), money orders, travelers checks, receipts of wire transfers, bearer bonds or items of value (eg gold & jewelry). Nowhere is it stated that you must declare the values of your credit/debit cards or crypto holdings. Period.

But they do extensive profiling while we apply for visa, for example if I want to get US visa from my country, I have to provide shit tons of documents that I don't even provide to my country's Income tax reporting just to get visa so yeah they knew who are getting into a country if they are entering legally and they might have a reason to seize for coming up with undisclosed in visa paperwork.

That is done to prove that you can pay expenses while you are in the country and are not likely to try and stay after the visa expires (in other words, you have a decent life in your home country and have no reason to leave it). If you have a visa for a 1 month stay and only declare say $500 in cash when you are entering - yeah they will ask about that but telling them you will use cards usually will satisfy them unless you have raised other flags. No one expects you to be carrying thousands of $ in cash to be paying for your time in the US.

There is a simple solution for this and it is do not keep more than a few hundred bucks inside your phone's crypto wallet (If you even want to at all, that is!) Delete all the apps you don't want CBP messing around with. You can reinstall them later. Clear every browser history on your phone. Move your stuff on Google Drive/iCloud temporarily to another location where your phone can't reach it. And most importantly have a bunch of decoy social media accounts ready so that if CBP tries to check that, they won't try to detain you for something you've said online (a la UK). It shouldn't happen, but it comes in handy. Just try to make it seem as normal as possible. And if you're carrying seed phrases, just "encrypt" them with ROT13 or Caesar's Cipher - easy stuff that can be trivially decoded while also not obvious to the police.

In some countries they ask for the hotel bookings too which is not a problem but a couple of times I have been asked to show the card limit details as well just to make sure that I am not lying which shouldn't be allowed right? They can't ask me to show my bank balance or card limits but they do and we can't really do much anything, we have to play along if we don't want to get in trouble.

In the US, yes they may ask about hotel bookings or where you are planning to stay but they cannot require you to give proof of card credit limits tho they can ask. Official CBP guidelines: https://www.cbp.gov/travel/cbp-search-authority/border-search-electronic-devices https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2018-Jan/CBP-Directive-3340-049A-Border-Search-of-Electronic-Media-Compliant.pdf Other countries - of course they may have different rules regarding that.

This is a good warning, particularly in light of the increased monitoring by CBP in the U.S., but this has been an issue since the creation of Bitcoin. TSA and CBP have been known to engage in very intrusive searches of Americans, and it is known that agents have been checking people's phones. Even having a passphrase or private key in a folded piece of paper on you or your luggage could be taken from you. It's best to plan ahead of time for any goon to possibly get in your way and rifle through your body or belongings at airports. In the past libertarians thew fits about this, but now that it's Trump doing or encouraging it it's a bit odd how many are suddenly silent about this.

The US, which is generally seen as a champion of freedom and privacy, is now put on the same level as China for espionage. I read that EU gives staff 'burner phones, laptops' for US visits .  There are reports that Canadian immigration lawyers also advise tourists to use burner phones when traveling to the US. Even European countries are still giving the same warnings to their citizens. France, Denmark, Germany, and Ireland Join Canada in Urging Travelers to Use Burner Phones at US Borders Amid Digital Surveillance and Detention Fears

These are valid points, but it's worth noting that while Europeans and Americans like to point fingers at one another, they have more in common than they'd like to admit. I have seen intrusive searches in European airports, and as concerns about migrants and terrorism grow in Europe, searches are likely to become more intrusive. There are, for example, concerns at airports about drug couriers and money launderers, so this always gives a nice pretext to invade your privacy. Perhaps the likelihood of agents checking one's phone is less in European airports, but I'm pretty sure it's happened before. Perhaps someone can clarify this.

I just saw this post and thought I'd respond. You assert that legal restrictions are in place to prevent agents from checking people's phones, and there must be cause or justification to do so, but isn't it the nature of authority to continue to push to see how far it can go, using any and all justification to do so? What about individual agents who refuse to abide by the laws in the strictest sense? I am sure many members here have been victims of intrusive searches at airports or ports. What about security agents that steal electronic devices? Agents have been busted for stealing electronic devices of travelers and selling them on Craigslist. I personally would not trust agents simply because they are supposedly restricted by law written somewhere - judgment and character will always play a role. Here's one example: https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/19/travel/naples-florida-cbp-officer-stealing-cash-passengers/index.html

I lived in USA for my entire life other than 5 years in the Navy which was overseas quite a bit. The usa is more fucked up on a few levels. my wife and I now carry our passports and our real id driver’s licenses 🪪. mostly because my wife has a very common name and I don’t want her to be accused by ice and dragged away without due process. police are quite a bit more nasty then they were. So i do not carry a phone with any cash accounts of any kind. My phone does not have emails or a lot of other features. A lot of texts are on it but none are anything to be afraid of.

I don't like to reveal personal details of myself, but I think it's safe for me to add that I have dealt with intrusive searches in the U.S. and European airports. Also, I added in the other thread linked to here the story of a CBP airport agent getting arrested for stealing from travelers. I can't believe the argument here and elsewhere is about laws written down on paper and electronically. We are talking about human beings.

Not really sure why you posted this here and not on the other thread. I guess this point has more visibility here than buried on page 11 on the other one. But in any case, it emphasizes what I was saying, it's better to at least have a plan for moving certain amounts of Bitcoin across certain borders. That's not rare in Europe. Technically, you can be fined or arrested if you leave your home without an ID in various countries even if it's just to go for a walk or buy bread, although this rarely happens. But even in European countries where it is not mandatory, I would say it is normal to leave the house with an ID or driver's license.

What would be the best way to get through customs at an airport with your Btc? The world changed a lot recent years, from AML/KYC, and less space for freedom from speech to other things. We as Bitcoin users and cryptocurrency users have to be more awared about this threat from customs to border security personel nowadays. If it is pure travelling vacation, don't bring big fund in and out countries and perhaps the max fund you can report to customs is $10k. I guess it is perhaps their reasons to check your cell phone, but I don't know it is a legal activity from customs. Travelling and bringing your big fund wallets together is not recommended even customs don't check your cell phone.

Now you have to be careful in any country. When I was returning to my country, the controller at customs checked all the social networks on my phone, the groups I subscribed to, the request logs in the browser. You can swear, prove your rights, or you can put the main phone in your luggage, and cross the border with the second phone and show a big smile to the border guard.

I think this thread is relevant here because we are discussing "legal" issues, and while some take a theoretical approach to laws, it's worth pondering how humans behave in an applied setting ie. the real world. The reality is, under martial law or under national security pretext, laws can be bypassed, and the exceptions in written laws can be applied rather liberally. Moreover, as I pointed out before, there is no reason to believe any individual doing security work will abide by written laws. Any security goon can just outright steal your property. In fact, this thread has made me rethink the risks of travel more generally - just think about how common it is for luggage to go missing or be stolen.

It appears that all frontends that show your cryptocoins should be deleted when you are traveling anywhere hehehehe. You can always download something to access them later. We cryptocoin holders have something similar to a personal Swiss bank account. The anticrypto politicians similar to grandma Warren and grandma Yellen do not want the people to have this realization because this will bring back power to poor people and away from our owners. Yes, we have owners. They own the most expensive land, they own the businesses that produce our daily needs, they own the biggest companies, they own the schools, the have churches and the government in their payroll. These are very powerful people.