One of the worst things imaginable when traveling abroad is losing your device, whether to theft or loss. All your valuable information, travel images and more could be gone in an instant and knowing how to protect your belongings in advance is the first step to preventing that.
Safeguard your device
At times you might be wearing an item without pockets, not carrying a travel bag or even going to the beach. Before your trip, ensure that you’ve purchased an anti-theft bag or a waterproof bag for the beach so that you can ensure your device is safe even if you’re unable to store it elsewhere.
Protect your personal data
If you haven’t already set up password protection on your device, ensure that you do it before you travel. Make sure you do what you can to make it complex in order to prevent making it easy for anyone to access your device should it get lost. Additional steps could include location finder and enabling remote wiping so that if all is lost, at least none of your personal data is tampered with.
Be safe in public settings
Never assume everything is fine when it comes to accessing any personal information, such as your bank accounts or company servers, etc. Do your utmost to avoid using any passwords or login id’s on public devices and instead try to only access it using your own personal devices.
Lock up and go
Being well-aware of your surroundings and the areas you are traveling to assists you in preparing. If you are traveling to an area with a high risk of pick-pocketing or theft, instead of carrying your device with you – leave it locked up in the safe at the hotel you’re staying at. If there are no lockers in your room, ask the staff if there is perhaps safes available on the premises.
Check your location and privacy settings
At home, knowing your location could be useful for the apps that you need it for to navigate or better your experience at home but when you’re abroad, make sure that your location is turned off for unnecessary apps or social media. This is information cyber criminals could use against you at any point.
Back it up
Before you leave for your trip, backup your device where it can be stored at home. In the situation where your device was lost or stolen, you would be able to restore the backup and have access to your data again.
Update your software
Although it might come off as unnecessary, updating your software could be crucial in ensuring your device is safe, especially in a cybersecurity sense. Software updates are created with the intention of fixing any bugs and preventing malicious devices that could be attempting to access your data. Think of it like a vaccine for your phone or tablet.
Get a local SIM
Apart from protecting your device from theft you need to ensure that you protect your data, getting a local SIM when travelling to the USA will ensure you keep data costs low and won’t need to worry about not being able to make and receive local calls. View the b4i.travel data packages here: https://webdev.b4i.travel/2020/usa/
There are a lot of things you can do to protect your device but remember that if your personal information lands in the wrong hands, it could be worse than just simply a lost phone. Take the time and steps to prevent that before and during your travels.
Be safe, have fun!