You really don’t understand who you’re talking to here. The average person hasn’t heard about browser extensions. I’m serious. The amount of even engineers that work with me who are incredibly good at one specific thing, like autocad design, but don’t really know or care about general computer things is pretty high, let alone non technical personnel. I’ve had people ask me to explain extensions and how to use ad blocking software. People just want a computer that works and does the thing they want it to without fancy things.

People don’t fear the terminal, they just don’t understand it and they don’t care to memorize things to learn it. If Linux wants to be an end user desktop, you need to do everything by the GUI. What is intuitive, interesting and easy to you is a nightmare for other people. I’m assuming vice versa if the accountant gives you a 10 dimension excel spreadsheet or something. It might just be me projecting my fear of accounting excel spreadsheets.

You use their servers to find your device and then exchange directly with it. They have discovery servers that link you when you don’t have a fixed ip address.

Or you can host your own personal discovery server for that.

Have you tried syncthing-fork? You can synchronize folders across the internet with it between all sorts of devices, including android. No middlemen required since it’s peer to peer.

I personally also suggest KeePass2 for an offline vault storage that you can use with Syncthing to synchronize so the data never leaves your devices.

It’s worth mentioning that both these programs are subject to leaks in machines infected with malware like OP’s was, so maybe if malware is a problem you deal with regularly, i suggest the online options.

The thing about anonymity that a lot of people don’t get is that there is no such thing as 100% anonymous. Vpn makes it more expensive to track you. Tor makes it more expensive to track you. Good opsec makes it more expensive to track you but ultimately, if you’ve got a target on your back, there is no way to be 100% anonymous.

The thing you gotta ask yourself is, what is your threat model ? Are you hiding from LEO on account of torrents or just want some privacy from corporations? VPN is fine. Are you buying drugs on the darkweb ? TOR is fine. Are you selling drugs on the darkweb ? You probably need a more sophisticated masking network mesh. Are you involved in CSAM or run a darkweb market ? Nothing you do will help you, you are going to get caught, that is a certainty.

Don’t go wasting your precious brain matter on developing a leak free network. There is no such thing. If someone wants badly to track you down, with enough money, they will. Best you can do is be a little bit more trouble than it’s worth to spend on you. For some things, like i mentioned before, there is a cutoff point where you’re as anonymous as you’ll ever be. For others, there is basically unlimited resources to track you. Even using TOR, they can get you at your entry node, like it has happened before, if no one else in your neighborhood is connected to TOR.

I tried looking around but this humble soul doesn’t have much in the way of receiving donations. I suggest contacting him via https://github.com/Catfriend1 to ask for an alternative and if he gets back to you, share it here for other people who dislike paypal.

Fyi the syncthing-fork guy who’s still updating has a donating button on F-droid via Liberapay. It’s up to you if your financial situation allows you to donate, but the more of us help the remaining developers for their time, in particular those of us that rely so much in their work, the better we’ll be off. Let’s give them a little motivation to keep working on this.

Even if such a thing existed, which given the analysis parameters makes it far too complex for automation (like for instance, how would such a software distinguish between old deleted data still residing in empty space and a vault file hidden in empty space without a follow up analysis of the data itself. It would probably alert the user for something, but the amount of false positives would probably lead an untrained user to ignore the alerts eventually) i would guess it doesn’t, but if it did, it would have to process petabytes every day, from all over the country and the system would have to be maintained, which going by government record of informatics systems, doesn’t seem likely that it would be readily available for everyone that gets stopped at a border stop consistently. It’s like an anti virus search, with all the false positives it comes up with, but 100 times slower, plus the transmission of the entire disk clone file, plus the cloning process itself.

Moreover the cost of maintaining such a system when 95%+ of the population doesn’t have the know how to use complex data obfuscation measures and LEO rarely obtains information out of these cursory searches for arrests. On published news articles LEO always ends up using snitches, google searches or usage of the TOR network in a given area to catch criminals. Data forensics only come into play later on. Presumably, dollar for dollar, they would probably invest in what works best instead of casting such a wide net.

In sum, I’m not cleared to know such information, but i am guessing such a thing, while technologically possible, seems economically unfeasible and liable to be used only in specific cases. If i had a border security budget, i would certainly not invest in a mega server to swift through every bit of empty and occupied space of all the randomly selected people for a search that come in through the ports of entry. However i could be wrong.

I think you overvalue the skillset of border security. This may seem trivial to you but it’s uncommon to hire people trained to this level of competence and put them at every point of entry. A decent cybersecurity investigator needs a big salary.

That would probably happen if you were already a suspect of something or a high profile person and they moved in resources for you. No way border security is randomly sweeping for headers and entropy, they basically just look at it with the explorer and clone it, possibly using some software to scan for known security vulnerabilities to access encrypted parts. That would be a court ordered search or a high profile crime investigation, or maybe a really really unlucky day where the expert was already there for another reason, but the rest i agree.

Well most recently this year i crossed US borders at the Texas point of entry. I was told expressly to always provide them with my devices, as if i said no thank you i would be denied entry to the US and it would go on the record for future visa applications, which could be denied on grounds of that, thus affecting future assignments. When you get a work visa, you have a time limit to enter the US and if you miss it, you need another. I was told i was completely responsible for any data that third parties could obtain and i would be fired and legally prosecuted if sensitive data was seen by people who did not have security clearance and NDA clearance for the data i was carrying, which border security does not have, even though some US government personnel do have those clearances.

Fortunately my company provided cloud space for any personal or company data i would be carrying and i wasn’t asked for anything because i came from Europe and i guess they weren’t too suspicious about me, so in the end it wasn’t an issue. Nevertheless, i had to take mandatory corporate training to prepare for any immigration interviews and had to sign specific liability agreements for the data i carry since it is highly sensitive.

I don’t just work as a liason in the US, but this was the most recent. For the industry i work in, this is pretty standard.

You can say no, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences, in my case I’d lose my job or lose assignments, which would probably mean I’d be put only on European assignments or demoted to a domestic only position, which would be paid substantially less. So in essence, i can’t really say no nor slack on opsec. Being able to feed my family is more important than protesting on grounds of principle for me. Also i could have issues getting to the US in the future, for any reason that may be, since getting a work visa requires grueling consulate interviews and they check literally everything. It’s one of the most annoying places to get work visas to, even coming from Europe. It took me one year of scheduling and attending interviews to be cleared for it. I was even asked to provide all my personal social media account handles.

I guess your company trains to different standards than my company then. A multi national globe operating company can never afford to fire employees for refusing to cooperate with authorities during border checks. At most it can train them to secure data during border crossing.

If the company i work for did what you suggest, they would fire all their employees in the space of a week or have them all detained or refused entry to countries. They’d lose billions in business. Only a domestic or low volume company can afford having their employees routinely detained at borders in such a manner.

It just doesn’t make any sense what you’re saying, but you do you bud. All the best.

You’re free to do that, but seems like a good way to be put on a list to be harassed more in the future. You make a cop/border agent feel stupid and he/she will make sure to make your life harder.

The records will show you’re trying different ports of entry and if a border guard doesn’t like you, you will be selected for investigation and getting off that list may take years. Worse, you can be banned from entry for no reason and good luck appealing that.

Personally i like to treat the customs agents real nice. I call them sir or ma’am, i follow their instructions and i show them a squeaky clean phone and they let me off with a smile at the first port of entry. Being combative with an agent will not change the laws. Moreover if you have obligations to a company, they will not look kindly to this sort of attrition causing delays and will pass you over next time they need someone. This of course means you won’t get paid as much (or, depending on circumstances, at all).

I agree with the other poster, picking battles is the way to go.

They will detain you. I know the US procedure because i was instructed as i worked there as a representative for an overseas company in Europe.

If you’re a national of the US they will detain you and hold you in detention to ask you questions. During this time your phone will either be cloned or confiscated to be decrypted at a later date. You will be released after a few hours. They will likely not bruteforce it, but rather attempt to use security flaws present in your device/firmware. They will do the same to your laptop.

If you’re not a national of the US, you will be denied entry and flown back to where you came from. This is common practice in a lot of western countries.

What you should do is not carry sensitive information across borders, by using a cloud service to sync at your destination or use hidden encrypted containers in your device.

Mullvad has written a post about it Here.

FYI

The desktop versions (Windows, macOS and Linux) of Mullvad’s VPN app have firewall rules in place to block any traffic to public IPs outside the VPN tunnel. These effectively prevent both LocalNet and TunnelVision from allowing the attacker to get hold of plaintext traffic from the victim.

Android is not vulnerable to TunnelVision simply because it does not implement DHCP option 121, as explained in the original article about TunnelVision.

iOS is unfortunately vulnerable to TunnelVision, for the same reason it is vulnerable to LocalNet, as we outlined in our blog post about TunnelCrack. The fix for TunnelVision is probably the same as for LocalNet, but we have not yet been able to integrate and ship that to production.

I gotta say, i am really impressed with Mullvad. They’re not just a VPN seller. They write security compromise bulletins regularly and as soon as vulnerabilities show up and they actively lobby at the EU organs for more privacy laws. They really work and live their identity in every way.

From what i read about it, Apple has a walled garden but charges a flat fee for everyone and has no special deals. Everyone pays the same and they make a little money off of the store but also the hardware sold.

Whereas Google has been caught treating certain parties differently, such as Spotify, something called Project Hug, where they gave extra benefits to parties at risk of leaving the play store, among other unequal dealings.

So the crux of the question is not about the monopoly itself, but the fact that Google is treating market players differently and throwing its weight around to influence the market to its advantage.