Two Missouri police officers were indicted separately this week and accused of similar crimes — pulling over women and searching their phones to find nude photos.
Like people have commonly said, avoid using biometrics.
In addition:
If you dont clean your phone screen, the leftover oil residues left by your finger could reveal the passcode. So wipe (as in physically wipe) your phone screen every time after you enter your passcode.
If you suspect cameras to be around, try to obstruct the view from any potential cameras recoding you as you type your passcode.
Not to mention there are some exploits like Cellebrite has figured out. So even with those precautions, your data still might not be safe.
In short, I’d recommend that you dont rely on your phone’s local encryption to protect your data.
Instead, encrypt with an open source program and upload the encrypted content to a cloud service that is hosted in a jurisdiction with good privacy protection laws (or alternatively, if you don’t like the cloud, keep it in a hard drive / SSD hidden in a safe location). And then delete the data from your phone. Cant force you to reveal you data if they don’t know what data exists.
But don’t assume this also works for android. I tested it on a Samsung phone and triggering the emergency call and expecting biometrics to be disabled, but I found out it does not disable biometrics, but you need to change a setting that enables a separate button to show up known as “Lockdown mode”. You then bring up the power menu and tap the “Lockdown mode” button to disable biometrics.
Or you can force a reboot, press volume down + power button for approximately 10 seconds.
For android phones that aren’t Samsung, it should be just holding the power button for 10 seconds.
Basically the standard operating procedure whenever you see law enforcement walking towards you, is that you should reach into pockets and press and hold the button combo to force a reboot. You don’t even need to take it out of your pocket and its less noticible than taking the phone out of your pocket.
Like people have commonly said, avoid using biometrics.
In addition:
If you dont clean your phone screen, the leftover oil residues left by your finger could reveal the passcode. So wipe (as in physically wipe) your phone screen every time after you enter your passcode.
If you suspect cameras to be around, try to obstruct the view from any potential cameras recoding you as you type your passcode.
Not to mention there are some exploits like Cellebrite has figured out. So even with those precautions, your data still might not be safe.
In short, I’d recommend that you dont rely on your phone’s local encryption to protect your data.
Instead, encrypt with an open source program and upload the encrypted content to a cloud service that is hosted in a jurisdiction with good privacy protection laws (or alternatively, if you don’t like the cloud, keep it in a hard drive / SSD hidden in a safe location). And then delete the data from your phone. Cant force you to reveal you data if they don’t know what data exists.
Also on iPhone, tap power 5 times will bring up the emergency call, BUT will disable biometric login and force the passcode.
But don’t assume this also works for android. I tested it on a Samsung phone and triggering the emergency call and expecting biometrics to be disabled, but I found out it does not disable biometrics, but you need to change a setting that enables a separate button to show up known as “Lockdown mode”. You then bring up the power menu and tap the “Lockdown mode” button to disable biometrics.
Or you can force a reboot, press volume down + power button for approximately 10 seconds.
For android phones that aren’t Samsung, it should be just holding the power button for 10 seconds.
Basically the standard operating procedure whenever you see law enforcement walking towards you, is that you should reach into pockets and press and hold the button combo to force a reboot. You don’t even need to take it out of your pocket and its less noticible than taking the phone out of your pocket.