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Going to China? Look at the anti-hacking precautions the pros take before traveling

Going to China? Look at the anti-hacking precautions the pros take before traveling

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The New York Times has taken a look at the hard-to-believe countermeasures that employees of corporations with sensitive information take when travelling.

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The New York Times has taken a look at the hard-to-believe countermeasures that employees of corporations with sensitive information take when traveling — specifically when going to China or Russia, two of several countries that don't allow encrypted devices to enter their borders without government approval. In the report, the precautions that Brookings Institution's Kenneth G. Lieberthal takes are detailed at length: he has a separate set of in-China and at-home devices, he removes the battery from his phone during meetings to avoid being recorded, he keeps Wi-Fi and Bluetooth off at all times, and he only copy and pastes his passwords from a flash drive in order to thwart keyloggers. Lieberthal isn't alone — employees at McAfee, Google, various US government agencies, and elsewhere take similar countermeasures before traveling to China or Russia, too. Of course, this may be overkill for a family vacation, but there's no denying that corporate and government hacking in China have been all too real in the last few months.