The IT Nerd

Everyone’s cellphones contains years and years of data about you. And that is likely why US Customs And Border Protection is super interested in looking at your cellphone. The fact is that this can tell them a lot about you and whether they should admit you to the US. So in the interest of getting the facts out there, here’s what Canadians need to know about those cellphone searches.

1. This is not new: Canadians think that cellphone searches are a new issue because of the most recent Trump Administration. But they are not. On they Canadian side of the fence, I wrote about this here and here. And on the US side of the fence (Not to mention other places. More on that shortly) I wrote about it here in reference to laptops. But cellphones can be copied and pasted here as well. And that was 2008 during the Bush/Obama administrations.
2. They’re looking for social media: US Customs And Border Protection appear to be looking for someone’s social media, text messages and emails. That way they can determine if you are admissible to the US. In other words, if you say something bad about the administration, you can be kept out of the US.
3. Refusing to hand over your password can end badly for you: A lot of us has password, fingerprint, or face authentication on our phones. And refusing to unlock a phone can make you “inadmissible” to the US because you cannot be properly inspected. And for you specifically, that may last years or forever.
4. Erasing your phone can end badly for you: If you get the bright idea to erase your phone to stop US Customs And Border Protection from looking at your phone. Don’t. A US citizen got arrested because he wiped his phone at the border. There’s zero reason to believe that non-US citizens can’t be arrested as well.
5. A burner phone might not even protect you. An idea is to get a burner phone so that it only has country specific info on it and it leaves off anything else. A good idea. But I have heard from a couple in my condo that they were refused entry to the US because having a burner phone implied to US Customs And Border Protection that they had something to hide. And I heard this from other people as well. I looked around and couldn’t find a hard and fast policy on this, but I have to assume that this might be a thing.

So what do you do? Well you have to make a call whether going into or through the US is worth it for you. My wife and I for example have determined a long time ago that it wasn’t worth it. So we won’t be visiting the US anytime soon. Also, you might want to consider that these rules in some way, shape or form might or will be coming to other places as well. Something to keep in mind if you travel frequently.

This entry was posted on September 25, 2026 at 8:54 am and is filed under Tips with tags Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.