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Putting Stickers On Your Laptop is Probably a Bad Security Idea (vice.com)
From border crossings to hacking conferences, that Bitcoin or political sticker may be worth leaving on a case at home. From a report: Plenty of hackers, journalists, and technologists love to cover their laptop in all manner of stickers. Maybe one shows off their employer, another flaunts that local cryptoparty they attended, or others may display the laptop owner's interest in Bitcoin. That's all well and good, but a laptop lid full of stickers also arguably provides something of a red flag to authorities or hackers who may want to access sensitive information stored on that computer, or otherwise cause the owner hassle.
"Conferences, border crossing[s], airports, public places -- stickers will/can get you targeted for opposition research, industrial espionage, legal or investigative scrutiny," Matt Mitchell, director of digital safety and privacy for technology and activism group Tactical Tech, told Motherboard in an online chat. Mitchell said political stickers, for instance, can land you in secondary search or result in being detained while crossing a border. In one case, Mitchell said a hacker friend ended up missing a flight over stickers.
"Conferences, border crossing[s], airports, public places -- stickers will/can get you targeted for opposition research, industrial espionage, legal or investigative scrutiny," Matt Mitchell, director of digital safety and privacy for technology and activism group Tactical Tech, told Motherboard in an online chat. Mitchell said political stickers, for instance, can land you in secondary search or result in being detained while crossing a border. In one case, Mitchell said a hacker friend ended up missing a flight over stickers.
I only paste QR codes for bad dragons and onaholes on my laptop.
Mine has two stickers: an AR-15 and a middle finger sticker. That's all they need to know.
The sticker covering your laptop's camera might be a good security idea ;-)
...while I slap some stickers on this honeypot.
Which has more power: the hammer, or the anvil?
Keep your opinions to yourself if you don't want to be targeted.
In other news Bumpers Stickers get you profiled! Who knew?
It's a Macbook Air, circa 2013, that I picked up for $300 and installed Parrot Linux on it on an encrypted partition. I rather keep my The Pirate Bay ship sticker and my Skyrim "We Know" hand print on my laptop.
I just put a sticker with the Compaq logo over my Apple logo. Never had my laptop messed with.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Not sure if they would even know what that is, just like my Lotus Notes or Harvard Graphics stickers.
I guess I should think about taking off that "My other computer is an AR-15" sticker, huh?
I thought this was America. Isn't this America? I'm sorry, I thought this was America.
You are welcome on my lawn.
only a child would think of ruining an aesthetic finish with stickers
No stickers allowed on my machines. They are ugly. Even the Intel/AMD stickers must go. Apple is the only one doing it right.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I put Whataburger stickers on my laptop power bricks. Mostly "JALAPEÑO". I guess that would profile me as being from Texas.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
You could have a laptop with just the factory stickers on it but if its odd looking it will still get you flagged.
try getting past them with a Purple/Mint green laptop.
You put all the cool and edgy stickers on your laptop.
Then leave that laptop somewhere safe on a VPN tunnel and bring a "clean" empty laptop with you. Extra points if it's running windows 7.
No way YOU are getting pulled aside by security for hours, or disappeared at customs for some of the more sketchy countries.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Nice try, Joker! The Gotham City Police Department aren't so easily fooled!
That will show them
I never got why people do this. Stickers on your laptop make you look like a kid.
Favor the Lords of the masses, do not express yourself, do not talk to others about your interests, do not put stickers on your laptops and automobiles. Be a good sheep, please the Lords. Be normal. Carry on.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
No! As soon as you give in to this kind of state terrorism, the terrorist start to win.
Stickers are just status symbols. A long time ago we use to smear dyes and goats blood on our chest to show our tribal identification. Less painful and itchy this way.
Times up on this though because recently I got laptop stickers promoting some IBM product to suck up your departments budget. Clear sign the kids will move on as they did when their grandparents friend-ed them on Facebook.
And much of stealth is just blending in. This isn't really anything new. One key to not getting robbed is to not wear all this flashy stuff that identifies you as someone worthy of being robbed. Who's the pick-pocket going to target, the guy with the $20,000 Rolex, or the guy with the $20 Timex?
Similarly, If you're doing things governments don't like, you'd far smarter just blending in rather than sticking out. People have this odd idea that they need to TELL EVERYONE who they are. Be Proud, Be Loud! Get over yourself. You can still make changes in the world and not have to stick out like a sore thumb.
Some haven't folded over, to spread their cheeks readily for their owner, my dear gimp.
It is those who think for themselves, who make the decisions you blindly follow now. So you are merely an avatar of those "not past the age of 19" ones anyway.
And being a good little follower, you of course attack the opposition with the good intentions, instead of the leaders with the evil intentions. As obeying the leaders is more important than what's right and wrong to you.
Submit to the king's guards!
Mitchell said political stickers, for instance, can land you in secondary search or result in being detained while crossing a border.
Stickers like "Free Palestine" and "Catalonia Rocks", or stickers like "I slightly disagree with California"? We travelers needs to know which triggers these sleepers on the job to wake up and deny our rights because they are annoyed.
The best way to keep prying eyes away from your stuff it to use Chromebook and wipe it before landing in the USSA.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
My laptop is covered with D&D stickers. I'm only likely to get harassed by GURPS players and jocks.
(also likely to get harassed by cops, but that's normal even without laptop stickers)
Are you cleared to view this material? Are you familiar with the penalties for accessing such material?
I put them over the logo on my Dell laptop.
If security ever asks me anything about them, I just tell them "the maze wasn't meant for you" and "it doesn't look like anything to me."
... on my ARM Chromebook which default-boots to a spoof account. Confuses the heck out of even the vaguely tech-savvy security guy. Love the puzzled look on their faces.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I'm a mobile/walking honeypot. :-)
You mean the Holy Mary Anti-Virus sticker that a religious nut client of mine bought for 50$ and put on his notebook is not a good idea?
Delayed the departure of a flight from Miami, delayed the departure of a cruise ship from Antigua, etc... and no-one even saw the stickers, half of which are in Russian. Didn't even have a decent excuse when finally on board; I just have one of those faces. Chances are, the sight of the stickers will bring a sigh of relief.
So i'm going to buy a lot more now: redbubble.com
Do you knows know places where I can get ***better*** quality stickers?
Probably won't find any secrets from YoYoDyne Propulsion Systems based on the sticker on my laptop (from " Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th dimension" in case you haven't heard of it , since its from back in the 80's)
Besides HAL-9000 won't let them open the laptop.
my laptop has stickers of strawberry shortcake unicorns shitting rainbows.
because i love pwnies. um, ponies.
Yeah. Found the iLivestock.
Not attracting criminals is one thing, but nosy-ass government and law enforcement types can fuck right off, and if not then perhaps they get sued for harassment. The United States may be under internal siege right now and is pretty fucked up, but it's still the United States. If you live in some other country and are reading this, then Your Mileage May Vary, of course.
Probably is. I mean dumb slogans, pseudo-intellectual quotes and in-jokes are practically the definition of "chick magnet".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Oh really? Some fringe political whining sticker is how you caught the nut job neo-communist feminist SJW? Did the blue/purple/red hair not give it away?
Have a Political Bumper Sticker? The FBI Might Be Snapping Photos of You
Road Rage Linked To Automobile Bumper Stickers
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
hmm do you think having an anonymous jacket logo with a pair of headphones is an issue. meh meh meh
It's like putting political bumper stickers on your car. At the very least you open yourself up for judgment by others. I remember being in Seattle a number of years ago and someone had an Obama 2012 sticker on their car. My boss pipes up and says "there's someone who obviously hasn't been paying attention the past four years". I cracked up. Because it was true. Way to demonstrate your ignorance. Not that the driver was aware. They were as blissfully ignorant as they were before in spite of us laughing at their expense.
And yet you are too cowardly to make bomb jokes while in the security line. Just joking!
What about My Little Pony stickers? I've got some Smurfs too.
Why people want bumper stickers, t-shirts, decals, etc. to publish opposition research for the public to see is beyond me.
Favor the Lords of the masses, do not express yourself, do not talk to others about your interests, do not put stickers on your laptops and automobiles. Be a good sheep, please the Lords. Be normal. Carry on.
Yes, yes! Please express yourself! Be unique. Put the SAME DAMN sports team sticker on your car as everyone else in your city. What kind of coffee mug do you own? Yeti?! Me too brother, me too! How many people are in your family? How many pets? Oh, I can just look at the back window of your vehicle. Haha, I have the same sticker on mine. Aw look, you know someone that died, so you put a memorial sticker on the back of your car. I know someone that died too... where did you get that?! I need one, so I can be unique and expressive too. Where do your kids go to school? Are you proud of them? That is unique sentiment amongst parents. Salt Life? What is that? Please tell me all about it. I like your Honda... thanks for putting the giant Honda logo sticker on the back window, it makes me not have to look at the other 8 logos that the factory put on it.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Guess what, people get political stickers because they _want_ to make a political statement. They are aware that not everyone will agree with them. The rest of the article is pretty obvious. When you travel to say Saudi Arabia, you want to leave your "Jesus Saves" sticker.
I have to admit I haven't been very careful about the laptop stickers myself. Once I brought a laptop with Ubuntu stickers to the LISA conference. Everyone is cool with Linux I thought. Well, on my way to hotel, I was ambushed by a group of BSD fanatics, who punched me in the face and broke my laptop. Just another day at the conference I thought. Let's be honest, we all used to be kids and I used to make fun of BSD people too, but this time putting acid drops in the eyelids was going too far. No more stickers on my laptops since then.
"Intel Inside" ones.
I read the article and didn't see any evidence of harrassment over stickers offered.
I only put stickers on my honeypot.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
..eet stain stickers would have been a deterrent. I guess getting access to free content outweighs flaky stains.
There is a better way. First of all, most stickers are too thin, so you still get a certain amount of light data which can give you proximity information and at times the ability to reconstruct the image from the data available even if it's not perfectly clear depending on the circumstances. A friend of mine gave me a plastic camera lid sticker and it was akin to putting a blue nylon across the camera, it simply made everything blue.
It's easier to secure the sensors directly than to try to deal with vulnerabilities and weaknesses in the system whether it's a phone or a laptop. Most of the time you don't need a powered microphone or a camera in standby on you, but you have one, because of your phone, tablet or laptop.
What you need to do is actually take out the little camera module entirely, or if you have the time, remove the camera module, solder a switch (they're usually listed as micro slide switches) on the side of the camera. This is a way better idea since it also looks visually pleasing, I really don't know why microphones, radio, speakers, and cameras don't come with physical off switches out of the factory. Thankfully it's fairly easy to make your own, even if you're not an electrical engineer. ( Here's one fellow on YouTube showing how to solder https://www.youtube.com/watch?... )
If you don't want to deal with soldering, most of those modules are removable, just put a piece of plastic strip under it and click it back on. Remove the strip when you need to use it.
I do exactly what they say in the article. Buy a 15$ shell, then remove it when you travel somewhere potentially sensitive.
I've been told by a few infosec types that laptop stickers actually DETER the average petty crook because it can make them potentially individually identifiable.
Make it a malt liquor. I want to be as clever and handsome as possible.
Sounds like a story from some alternate reality where the Nazis won the war.
Requiem for the American Dream
Stickers are for children.
But if political stickers can get you detained while crossing the border of a country, then the border patrol is wasting taxpayer money on a power trip frivolous harassment.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
One of my favourite genres: where the people targeted by the chilling effect self-organize their own stampede toward compliance.
Grassroots cryptocurrency? #Fuggedaboutit.
I for one welcome our new overlord cult of bland, generic, anonymous, non-fraternal public personas.
This is, of course, assuming that the choir leaders of lemming compliance haven't secretly sold out to The Man.
Wheels within wheels. Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.
This is exactly why I would never put a sticker on a car either. Just supporting one of the 2016 candidates is enough to provoke some idiot into slashing your tires while you shop for groceries.
Land of the free?
Hows that working out so far.
On my laptop:
* AMF - Aspen Moon Farms
* Ozo Coffee
* Boulder Valley Velodrome
* Korbadeere Coffee
* Ampersand Coffee Roasters
Who's gonna target me? The Decaffeinated State in Syria?
For example, my parents. They are more important to me than you. If there were a sinking car with my dad and you strapped in, my priority is saving dad first, and making sure he's all right after, over saving you.
Border guards get bored then eventually they get petty. They act like little Hitlers. Anything could set them off.
The correct response would be their bosses pulling them into line. The actual response is that the bosses like this sort of vindictive shit. It means they can put whatever other crap into the "border experience" they like and get away with it.
That's why stickers and T-shirts that are entirely harmless expressions of opinion are seen as provocative. Standard authoritarian bullshit, in the miniature.
Where travelling is only pleasant for extreme patriots. Thankfully the rest of the world still only cares about people who blow shit up which is a logistic problem.
First thing I do to a new laptop is put a bunch of ragged looking skateboarding and hacker stickers all over it.
Why?
Makes the laptop look beat up and old to discourage theft. Also makes it more difficult for someone to discretely walk off with it because it stands out like a sore thumb.
... there IS no sensitive data on a device transiting a border. All they get is the factory settings.
Sensitive data doesn't transit borders in devices. It transits in TLS streams and is subject to blocking, but not inspection. /shrug
Thanks mom, i never thought of it that way!
You probably know some stuff about prepping if you know the difference between a bolt carrier and a muzzle brake.
You know why it is good to be the gray man? You are not targeted first. This applies to laptops as well. I might slap a case, but just like my car, I don't have bumper stickers, or any obviously identifying traits. No anti-popo slogans, no Molon Labe stuff, and on the other side, I don't have a blue line flag. This way, if some Alliance person is looking for a fight in a library, they will beat the crap up out of the guy with the Horde stickers on his/her laptop, and I can tiptoe to the exit.
Tips for survival:
5. Don't look like food.
This applies even when entering the habitat (frequently an airport) of the loud-mouthed TSA goon. The goon is unusual in that it searches for prey that is too different or too boring. In the former case, don't brag about unique interests or lifestyle. In the latter, don't carry anything too-ish; too old, too shapeless, too bright or big.
"He's got to like you and then forget you, the moment you've left his side.", Rusty Ryan, Ocean's eleven, 2001.
Look, if you have an "Intel Inside" sticker on your laptop, everybody with half a brain will know you are employed by an intelligence agency and you store espionage data on your hard drive.
What did you think the sticker was for?
"Slow Down Cowboy! It's been 58 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment" -- slashdot, driving users away.
So this is why I have to take my laptop out of its sleeve before sending it through the X-ray?
I never understood that...
Have you never witnessed the "sorry, that's my laptop" mixup at airport security? A little personalisation can help.
The unicorn stickers on mine shouldn't attract the wrong kind of attention though, right?
This post is a work of art, especially posting anonymously. Just... bravo!
Seriously though...
Sometimes the pain of living a guarded life is too much to bear for some people. I'd be one of those. Fuck towing the line just to stay out of trouble. I know what I'm getting myself into but I also plan on opposing it with all my strength.
That in and of itself is worth it. Not being bland for the sake of avoiding the scrutiny of assholes isn't worth it, and I'll fight to the death for everyone's ability to do so.
If you aren't actively hurting anyone, more power to ya.
so I don't want the adhesive to get all gummy since the lid flips backwards and on top of the cpu - though I have stickers all over my old laptops.