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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.
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.