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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.
...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.
Yes, that tells me a lot.
his penis is very very tiny
Oooo... Super edgy.
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
The sticker covering your laptop's camera might be a good security idea ;-)
I wonder...
Do anyone make laptop camera stickers that look like laptop cameras?
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.
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
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.
I'd like to see you try checking in to a high-rise Las Vegas hotel with that.
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.
What are you gonna do? Shoot 'em if they target you for legal scrutiny?
// This is not a sig.
No, but you can make your own out of some old-fashioned shiny clear Scotch tape.
You seem to fail to understand that "the authorities" have more guns and bigger guns and more people and jails. It's cute that you want to display your bravado but that will only get you targeted and will not end well.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
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!
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?
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
If I was wearing boots I'd be quaking in them.
I bet you like have loads of tattoos and piercings and stuff. To demonstrate your individuality - just like everyone else.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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.
my laptop has stickers of strawberry shortcake unicorns shitting rainbows.
because i love pwnies. um, ponies.
At least make it a little more intellectual and make it a molòn labé sticker... That way, Tweedle the TSA agent, who can't find any other jobs and regrets his poor life choices every time he drives in for the early shift, won't understand the implication.
By the way: find me a laptop without the manufacturers name/logo on the lid. I dare you!
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
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."
You seem to fail to understand that "the authorities" have more guns and bigger guns and more people and jails. It's cute that you want to display your bravado but that will only get you targeted and will not end well.
And what is very disturbing to this thread is that we're talking about a dystopian police state and nobody seems to notice, or care. And I'm living in a South American country that seems and feels far more free than the US.
My only advice for you: RISE!
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.'"
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.
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.
if you want to offer yourself up to our bureaucratic golem, go right ahead
love is just extroverted narcissism
"Intel Inside" ones.
Know what happens when nobody sticks up for their civil and human rights? They get taken away. Stop being a lilly-livered yellow-bellied coward.
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.
Yeah god forbid everybody not be boring and beige, right? We all have to look like drones, otherwise "they" will notice us.
Funny how everything is about penises with you weirdos...
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.
Definitely not insightful. I can think of a whole bunch of mods this could instead be:
- Has no balls
- Doesn't know the constitution/The constitution doesn't mean anything to him
- Won't fight for his rights
- Believes he'll always lose
- Likes his little corner
Seriously. WTF? Let them keep the fucking notebook. End of story for a while, but you stood for what you believed was right. I'd love for them to take away my notebook because I wouldn't provide the decryption key. And I'd love to fight to try to get my notebook (and my rights) back.
It's always there; I think the point is that Apple uses power to keep it lit. Yeah, they've advertised their name from day one... but not at the expense of your battery life.
I wonder...
Do anyone make laptop camera stickers that look like laptop cameras?
I like those bullet-hole stickers that wannabe gangstas put on their cars... it says so much.
No sig for you! Come back one year!
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.
You don't look like food if you merge with the natives. Smile at your TSA operative, demonstrate that you're entirely comfortable with the situation, show your confidence that this is nothing unusual or concerning to you and make them glad that it's you and not some obnoxious twat trying to make them feel miserable for having a shitty job that they can't get out of.
everyone knows speed holes give you like a 15 HP boost
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Have you never witnessed the "sorry, that's my laptop" mixup at airport security? A little personalisation can help.
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.
Hah, I'm not the only one. Lisa Frank stickers make my laptop run faster!!
stickers on laptops are not worth fighting over. Yes, yes, I know. They came for my neighbors stickers and nobody stood up...
my dad had some idiot kick his bumper in the last election cycle.
And what is very disturbing to this thread is that we're talking about a dystopian police state and nobody seems to notice, or care. And I'm living in a South American country that seems and feels far more free than the US.
My only advice for you: RISE!
The difference is that in the US, employees of the police state expect the sanction of their victims. Criminals are more honest.