How To Sext Securely When Traveling

I’m not going to judge how you like to keep in digital touch with your partner(s? oh, heey playa!) but whether or not you’re sending private parts electronically, you might want to keep some bits private. Not turning your phone into a peepshow is the most secure solution but since half of you are already sexting, here’s what you can do to prevent unintended leakage.

Basic Phone Security

First of all enable a lock screen passcode for your phone (here’s how on Android and iOS). Because lock screen passcodes are a dubious protection measure at best and given that most countries can legally require you to give up passwords at customs, you’ll need to go deeper. Both free apps Private Photo Vault (iOS) and Gallery Lock (Android) have stealth modes that can hide evidence of secure picture folders when you enter in a decoy password. (Laptop users can enable the same protection using Truecrypt hidden folders.)

Don’t Get Sunk By Syncing

There are a lot of famous boobs online because of iCloud, Apple’s service which syncs photos taken on an iPhone to its servers. Android devices have a similar feature, which in theory is supposed to be hassle-free way to backup pictures you take. The Internet is not a good place to store anything you hope to keep remotely private so with a few clicks disable photo syncing.

• How To Keep Your Phone From Syncing Photos To The Cloud – Gizmodo’s got a quick rundown for both iOS and Android devices.

Digital clouds aren’t inherently risky, in fact there’s a good way cloud services can be used to protect your privacy, particularly if you lose physical contact with your hardware.

• Remote Wipe Your Phone – Setting up the iOS built-in feature Find My Phone lets you wipe your Apple devices if they’re lost or stolen (here’s how) using iCloud and Google has a similar capability for Android.

Also, keep in mind although we’re talking phones here, almost all of the advice in this post applies to tablets as well.

The Internet Is Big, Here’s How To Use It

Don’t get kinky with social media. Seriously, don’t. Not with Facebook’s new Messenger app you might be freaking out about, Twitter, Instagram… you get it.

• Snapchat Is Not Secure – Nothing completely is but the social media company’s recent settlement with the Federal Trade Commission highlighted many privacy features that were exaggerated.
• Send Encrypted Self-Destructing Texts – Wickr, a free app for Android and iOS that’s got a development team well-versed in computer security gives them a lot of credibility as does their solid privacy policy.

Still, any service you use to send digital content requires a degree of trust with the provider. (Not to mention the person who’s on the receiving end of your sexiness.) In any case travelers especially should take some basic precautions to protect communications from the NSA and lock down your laptop as all of your digital property is vulnerable when crossing international borders – cloud or no cloud.