Although it is hard to judge, ideally you should have an everyday phone that is the safe, vanilla you. And a second phone for anything even slightly risky – your burner phone.
A burner phone can also be for when you attend something like a protest, and provides minimum risks and the ability to communicate what is occurring.
- Make it cheap. Rarely will such a phone need to fancy, although being waterproof is good. It needs to be cheap enough to be willing to sacrifice without a second thought. These days most cheap phones are good enough for useable video
- Pre-paid. Make sure you have no long-term commitment, and use whatever the lowest ID option your country has
- Disable fingerprint and face unlock, and instead require typing a passcode or password to unlock your phone. This makes it take longer to get into your phone, but it also makes it considerably harder for police to get in without your consent
- Set up a SIM PIN, which prevents police from removing the SIM card from your phone and inserting it into another, which would allow them to take over your phone number. Here are iPhone instructions and Android instructions for doing this. If you set a SIM PIN, you’ll need to type it every time you reboot your phone in addition to your passcode
- Use a Password Manager, if you are using many apps. This saves remembering too many passwords. Make sure apps don’t remember you, if possible
- Use Google Photos to automatically upload all photos and videos you take to the cloud. This way if police confiscate or damage your phone during the protest, you’ll be able to log in to your burner Google account from another device to access your media later on. Be aware, however, that pictures in Google Photos are not encrypted, meaning Google will be able to provide them to authorities if subpoenaed
Inspired by and partly copied from:
https://theintercept.com/2020/06/15/protest-tech-safety-burner-phone/
