Checklist 02
Travel does not change the level of threat, it changes the cost of a mistake. At home a lost phone is an inconvenience; in another country it is the simultaneous loss of communication, money, documents and the means of restoring all three.
English version for the United States.
This page is laid out for printing: only this order of actions reaches the printer.
Public Wi-Fi stopped being the main problem long ago: almost all traffic is encrypted. The main problem is that access to money, mail and documents lives on one device that can be lost in a second.
So the preparation is not against traffic interception but against losing the device: a second way in, a second way to pay, and copies of documents somewhere that does not depend on the phone.
The preparation takes twenty minutes and consists entirely of duplication. A second payment instrument kept apart from the first. Backup codes printed. Copies of documents reachable from somebody else's device.
Separately, check where account recovery will go: if it goes to the number that stays in the lost phone, there will be nothing to recover with.
What is lost together with the phone and what duplicates it
| What is lost | Consequence | Duplicate |
|---|---|---|
| The payment app | No access to money | A second card kept separately |
| The second factor | No entry to the mail | Printed backup codes |
| The phone number | Recovery goes nowhere | A recovery email not tied to the number |
| Documents in the gallery | Nothing to confirm identity with | A copy reachable from another device |
| Contacts | Nobody to reach | Numbers on paper |
Family
The most effective protection inside a family is not configured on a phone. It is a handful of agreements settled in advance and out loud, because at the necessary moment the person will be alone and under pressure.
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Recovery
Recovery is only ever prepared in advance. At the moment access is already lost there is nothing to change the recovery contacts with and nothing to print the backup codes from, because that requires the very access that is gone.
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Breach
A letter saying your data appeared in a breach reaches almost everybody and almost always frightens more than it should. The useful work here is short and depends on what exactly leaked rather than on the size of the headline.
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