I deleted my entire social media presence before visiting the US – I'm a citizen

https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/21/column_social_media_entrapment/

by rntn • 1 year ago

117 81 1 year ago

theregister.com

ranger_danger3• 1 year ago

Isn't this exactly what they want? To quash dissent?

santoshalper• 1 year ago

Yeah, probably, but you don't have to be a martyr for the cause if it means not being able to go home.

hollywood_court• 1 year ago

I deleted all of my social media accounts prior to the last presidential election. I didn't wany myself or my family becoming targets of the administration or their sycophants.

ranger_danger3• 1 year ago

not speaking up is exactly what they want...

fundad• 1 year ago

I did something similar. I knew anything on my accounts was already in the palantir dataset used by DHS. I wanted to at least remove presence local on my phone, I didn't bring a computer abroad with me.

I went through my history and deleted twitter, x and bluesky (I didn't and still don't read them via their apps). Probably should have deleted any mastadon links that I viewed in case any were not loyal enough.

I deleted stored passwords for all social media. Deleting SMS was tedious, if you donate, they sell you number to every campaign that is considered the "enemy of the people" by the establishment. The best I could do was search for "campaign" and "Trump" and delete the SMS messages out of the Messages app.

Of course my luck was better than I expected. All I did at immigration was point out one of my kids was really tired (he was quite sick on the plane-ride home). The CBP agent said something about "I'll get you out of here soon" and that was true without a single question.

I suppose my toddler makes me look like less of a risk to national security than when I would return from solo overseas travel. I'm not going to get too comfortable though.

codyb• 1 year ago

I mean... just get a burner phone and transfer the number over for your travel duration and call it a day seems easier than all this.

Cheapo iPhone Mini on one of the refurb sites'll run you a couple hundred bucks. Not too too bad if you just need something to connect to Wi-Fi and access maps and email with.

nudgeOrnurture2• 1 year ago

someone just checked the incogni database, ... you didn't delete anything

VoidWhisperer• 1 year ago

Isn't someone doing something like this the exact opposite of what incogni would want considering their whole business is to 'help people remove their data' from data brokers?

nudgeOrnurture2• 1 year ago

'help people remove their data from all other data brokers'

ripped_britches2• 1 year ago

I am also deleted from socials from many years (besides anon HN), so I hear the perspective, but isn’t a bit dramatic to relate it to border reentry for an American citizen?

Or is there some absurd news story I missed?

josefresco• 1 year ago

is there some absurd news story I missed?

You've missed several, here's a good summary (while it's still online): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_and_deportation_of_A...

xdennis• 1 year ago

Stephen Miller [...] ordered American security forces to arrest at least 3,000 humans per day nationwide.

What a bizarre article! It always refers to illegal immigrants as "humans" as if that's the crime.

Is this a new trend in the euphemism treadmill? Have we moved from "undocumented immigrant" to "human"?

saubeidl5• 1 year ago

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/05/12/hasan-...

Piker, a U.S. citizen who streams on Twitch under the name HasanAbi, said in a live stream that he was taken aside after landing at Chicago O’Hare International Airport from Paris on Sunday — despite being enrolled in Global Entry, a CBP program that is supposed to give expedited clearance to “pre-approved, low-risk travelers” returning to the U.S.
Piker said he was brought to a detention room inside O’Hare that had “fluorescent lightbulbs, the whole nine [yards]” and where a CBP agent questioned him for about two hours about his job, his political affiliation, his opinion of Trump and whether he had any connections to terrorist groups.

coupdejarnac2• 1 year ago

Hasan's story is totally fabricated, so that's a bad example.

Quarrelsome2• 1 year ago

I think a non-citizen should take a burner phone or clean phone and set all their social media to private before going. The risk is considerable and being placed into a holding cell for weeks or months, even when having a ticket home (as has happened to some) is a truamatic outcome.

A citizen has a question to ask, on if they want to risk being one of the unfortunate examples to create a media wave of pushback, and if so; be prepared for a tricky interview. Obviously those with children and things to do might not want to take that risk.

With all of this in mind: One might note the powerful hypocrisy of JD Vance's unexpected lecture to the governments of European allies demanding protections of free speech[0], while America's current border policy is the polar opposite of that. There's nothing wrong with being strict on people who you think are entirely intending to violate their visa but everything wrong in trying to thought-police some pretty soft ideas[1]. The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin.

For me, this administration has been a huge mask slip for pretty much all the "personal freedoms" talking points of GOP politicians/voters. Its appears it was never about "free speech" but rather the dominion of their speech.

[0] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ceve3wl21x1o

[1] https://time.com/7297472/jd-vance-meme-mads-mikkelsen-touris...

moelf• 1 year ago

set all their social media to private before going.

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/19/g-s1-73572/us-resumes-visas-f... : All students applying for a visa will need to set their social media profiles to "public," according to a post Wednesday on the State Department's website

tim333• 1 year ago

The answer may be to have more than one set of social media - one with your real ID you keep clean and upbeat for work, immigration etc and others in a modified name for other stuff.

supportengineer• 1 year ago

Create an alternate, pro-trump public social.

GlitchRider47• 1 year ago

Take it a step further, get a Trump phone on Trump mobile, loaded with pro-Trump public socials

JohnTHaller2• 1 year ago

They scrape all social media on a pro-active basis, so setting it to private before a trip won't help.

mingus882• 1 year ago

I set up accounts with my full legal name on them a while ago. There is minimal activity on them. If anyone wants to find me, msg me there.

I do all my actual online activities with handles as God intended back in the good old days.

Social media’s goal of connecting everyone with real names never was for our benefit and we all should stop giving them this data.

IAmBroom• 1 year ago

The tourist who was refused entry just for having that JD Vance meme on his phone seems to cross that line by quite some margin.

My understanding is that he was stopped for other reasons, and that meme was questioned while he was being already detained.

However, there's NO doubt this is not the America I grew up in.

mcv• 1 year ago

My solution is simply to not go to the US. I'm sorry. I know it used to be a great country, and there are still many great people living there, but I'm afraid the US dropped below China on the list of countries I'd like to visit. There are a hundred countries I'd feel safer.

mahirsaid• 1 year ago

Reddit as well.

asdfasvea2• 1 year ago

My pity and my respect are mutually exclusive. This author seemingly wants both and gets neither. People like this are worse than the bullies.

Either be brave enough to stand up for what you believe in or shut up and do your capitulation in silence.

tempodox• 1 year ago

If you ever made a social media account under your own name, the game's over. I'll assume the alphabet agencies will be able to see even “deleted” accounts.

seydor• 1 year ago

Is there someone aggregating information about these incidents? Would be nice to know if i should avoid visiting next year.

But also i can't help but feel sorry and mad about all the people who used their real names online for political activism. How have you not learned these lessons from history? Did you think you re special?

JohnTHaller2• 1 year ago

ICE now uses Mobile Fortify that does instant facial recognition and fingerprint scanning against hundreds of millions of images that looks up DHS, State Department, and state law enforcement databases. It can then do a "Super Query" that can hit multiple databases on individuals, vehicles, airplanes, vessels, addresses, phone numbers and firearms. LexisNexis will be added in the near future.

They also use Clearview AI which does facial recognition against social media and the web.

AlexandrB• 1 year ago

I was way ahead of all the people deleting their social media by not posting anything to social media since ~2015 or so. I'm still shocked that people put up with the abuses of Meta, Twitter, and all the rest.

chank• 1 year ago

In 2025, social media has moved from self-expression to self-entrapment

I sort of feel if you're only figuring this out now you've been willfully/woefully ignorant.

newsclues• 1 year ago

Deleting your social media accounts right before travel could be regarded as suspicious and not effective as your account data may not really be deleted.

WarOnPrivacy3• 1 year ago

From the article:

    Remember the year: 2025 was when it all changed.
    When socials transformed from self-expression to entrapment.

I have to disagree with the 2025 part of this. While this admin has made the 100mi Constitution Free Zone even more hostile, practices like leveraging SM accounts against us have been ramping up for most of a decade.

refs: https://www.techdirt.com/2017/02/09/dhs-secretary-says-agenc...

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/01/02/dhs-documents-show-haras...

https://www.techdirt.com/2018/12/17/report-cbps-border-devic...

SketchySeaBeast4• 1 year ago

While it's possibly a valid point, those articles are all from the last iteration of this specific administration.

WarOnPrivacy3• 1 year ago

It is my experience that every administration massively ramps-up Bush era bulk surveillance.

namlem• 1 year ago

This is just more nonsensical fear-mongering for clicks.

zenmac• 1 year ago

When FB first came out someone work in finance said

"this is personal file, but the intellgency agencies has just made it fashionable and making money for us to maintain our own personal files"

This is even worse then the Stasi. At least at that time people didn't see it as something operasive, but now we see it as fashionable.

It is more important to NOT have your personal data on the some else's hardware.

blindriver• 1 year ago

Facebook has made it impossible for a generation of people to become spies and undercover cops, because their parents have uploaded an entire childhoods worth of photos and identifying information onto there. They have been doxxed before they even knew they wanted to be spies. Every nation state has spies in all the big tech companies.

mrtksn2• 1 year ago

What I wonder is, are people just listing their social media accounts when asked? I would imagine that if I was an activist on social media or if I was expressing strong views not liked by somebody I would definitely not tell that somebody if they are in a position to make my life harder. Is this maybe like the "Are you planning to do a terrorist attack" question in the visa application form or maybe like the one that asks you if you committed a genocide or war crimes?

My bet is actually that it is intended to silence anyone who is NOT hostile to USA but has grievances with the current administration, i.e. someone who is smart and actually admires USA and aspires to visit/study/work in USA but wants USA to be better. I.e someone smart who has a chance to get into a prestigious US University and aspire to actually make the world a better place by someday make a huge contribution to science and wishes that USA was ethical country so their life work was put in a good use and not just some financial/political gain.

I'm pretty certain that USA will have a change in profile of the people they attract and that's probably the intention but I don't think that it will be good for America and the humanity. The message is clear, if you aspire to make the world a more fair place or a place that the humanity as a whole gets elevated then don't come, this place is about maximizing the power of the politicians and the profits of the shareholders.

square_usual• 1 year ago

What I wonder is, are people just listing their social media accounts when asked?

The State Department is fully capable of finding social media accounts that you haven't listed: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/technology/tech-news/red...

And given that they're working hard on gathering data on citizens too, this will soon apply to you too?

mrtksn2• 1 year ago

I imagine that if I was a political activist or something I would have op-sec.

That's why, IMHO, this is just an attempt of inducing self censorship among those who aspire to come to US for something productive.

comrade1234• 1 year ago

lol. Did the same thing. Deleted WeChat (great for meeting Chinese women traveling and wanting to meet locals), deleted viber and everything else.

I have also nuked my hackernews account multiple times in the past and will probably do it again before my next trip.

maxglute• 1 year ago

What's the process for checking? They ask you to unlock your phone or hook it up to some machine and slurps info out?

lovelearning• 1 year ago

Why are such articles flagged? And why do only flaggers get a flag vote but there's no unflag vote?

I deleted my entire social media presence before visiting the US – I'm a citizen

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