Make a habit of giving out as little personal information as possible! Guard your phone number, email, social media, and any other personal information. Be careful who you give this info out to!
Personally identifiable information (PII) is the word in focus when discussing information phishing. Phishing can be done through everyday conversations or digital communication. GemsOfTravel does not wish that you become overly paranoid on these topics, but there is basic security hygiene practices that you can incorporate for safekeeping your personal information.
Traveling and living in a foreign country is exciting, and it’s beautiful through the lens of rose-tinted glasses. However, perhaps it’s good to “never talk to strangers” and suppress our inner social butterfly to an extent. Relax and enjoy your time in SE Asia, but also don’t lower your guard too much – employ good habits.
Recommendations To Start Off
Make a habit of giving out as little personal information as possible!
Make a habit of responding, “I do not have one [a phone number or phone plan]”, when asked for your phone number.
So many places ask for very personal information that they do not need. Do you really need to tell them your passport number to buy a bicycle? No, that’s just silly. And, no-one needs your phone number, either. You’ll quickly find out that they will just say “okay, no problem [that you do not have a phone number]”, proving they do not need it.
In the Western world, we trust the institutions and businesses with our data (ignore data breaches and leaks) and handout or information whenever asked.
In Southeast Asia, there are no data protections for you… there is no GDP&R. And, assume there is zero mindset of data security.
Another issue is that both, scamming and spam calls, exist. Keep your phone number off the spam call list. Scammers look for people who stand out and are vulnerable. Being in a foreign country does put you in a more vulnerable position compared to your home country – the local laws and norms are different — no surprise there.
Culture Of Trust
Be aware of high-trust and low-trust societies. Which do you come from?
Westerners tend to not question those in ‘trustworthy’ positions. However, ‘trustworthy positions’ in Southeast Asia should be questioned, simply because there is a lack in law and regulations to protect the individuals.
Be aware if/when you are high-trust. Leaning towards the side of low-trust is a good thing in Southeast Asia, even if it feels suppressing.
That said, Asians are well-known to ask very personal questions such as “how much money do you make?”, “why aren’t you pregnant, yet?”, and “why are you here?”. This is just how they are, and it certainly feels interrogative to Westerners. Asians being a collective society instead of individualistic, you just don’t know who will share information with whom (plus, the local Aunties love new gossip material). Therefore, it’s best to draw boundaries – don’t be too polite or nice about it – they do not need to know your personal information.
Email Addresses – Be Safe And Privacy Focused
Do not share your personal email tied to anything important, such as bank accounts. A lot of scamming (phishing and similar) is done through email, and has become an increasingly bigger problem over the years.
You’re thinking, “Yea… ok, but I need email to make hotel bookings and such.” Well, here are a couple of solutions for that.
Dummy Email Address Account(s)
Dedicate these email account(s) for traveling, shopping, messaging app sign-ups, or keeping in touch with people you meet. Within the email app on your smart phone, you can add multiple email addresses – the email app acts as an email client. Therefore, if you use the Gmail app, then these new email address do not actually have to be from Gmail – they can be Lycos, AOL, Yahoo, or any other email domain.
This is probably better than ’email aliases’, mentioned below, because any phishing is contained within the email address account. If the email address is only used for traveling, then it is not tied to anything important like banking.
Email Alias(es)
This is basically the same result as the ‘dummy address account’, mentioned above. The only difference is that you can delete and change the alias address whenever you want. This allows you to start fresh with a new alias (fake intermediary address or ’email mask’). This helps prevent loads of junk and spam emails.
Email aliases are a temporary (some are permanently re-usable) email address mask that is used to keep your email address private. It is a mask that hides your real email address. The person who receives your email message will see and respond to this ‘fake’ intermediary email address, which will forward to your real one. Therefore, they will not know what your real address is.
Where to get email aliases:
> Firefox email aliases
> Protonmail (purchased simple login and integrated it within proton mail)
> Simple login email aliases
Tip
Accommodation booking website, Booking.com, uses it’s own built-in messaging platform between you and the hotel. Booking.com uses email aliases, which is basically a temporary email address that is used to keep your email address private.
The way it works is you go to your email and send a message to the hotel, booking.com takes that message and sends it to an email alias assign to you, that alias sends and email to the hotel’s alias, which shows up in their email app. The same thing happens in reverse when the hotel send you a message.
Pretty nifty! And we greatly appreciate Booking.com’s effort in protecting customer privacy.
Phone Number – From Home Country
Keep this home phone number of yours private when abroad. Do not share it with others, since it is your lifeline to your life at home.
Instead, share the phone number of your local SIM card. Or, use messaging apps.
Note
WhatsApp displays your phone number to anyone you have contact with via the app. Random people having access to your phone number isn’t ideal.
Good thing is that you can create a second account on WhatsApp using the phone number of your local SIM card plan, which is a better choice than using your normal WhatsApp account. Definitely consider using this! Contacts will see your local phone # not your personal phone # from home (you know, the one that is tied to all your important accounts).
Signal is an alternative to WhatsApp, in which you can set your settings to hide your phone number and create a username. You can share the username with others and they will not see your phone number. The issue is that not everyone uses Signal – WhatsApp is much more common.
Phone Number – Local
Instead, get a local SIM card upon arrival in Southeast Asia and share that phone number.
Here is two scenarios:
(1) The plan includes data and talk & text, in which you are all set.
(2) The plan is data only, but will have a phone number associated with it. Even though it is “data only”, you can use that phone number to create a second profile on WhatsApp to communicate with people while in Southeast Asia.
The downside to sharing the SE Asian phone number is that if you are traveling around that phone number will expire after some time. However, the good thing is that using this local phone number for the second profile on WhatsApp will still work. To clarify, the expiration of the phone number does not affect the profile made on WhatsApp with the phone number. That is, until someone else decides to create a WhatsApp account with that phone number (should be rare, though), then your account would get signed-out of. This only happens when you loose control of the SIM card phone #, such as if it was only a 2 week SIM card and the phone # gets recycled for future customers buying a SIM card.
Messaging Apps & Social Media
Below are ideas that you can implement. They are just a starting point to get you thinking.
Throwaway accounts
Accounts that are not tied to anything important that you can delete at any time. Use these for restaurant bookings or whatever random things pop-up.
Social media account
You could… use your real name or an alias for privacy reasons. Example alias: ‘TravelingSEAsia4Beaches’ instead of you real name ‘Jane Doe’.
Use your existing account, or create a new one separated from your main account. And, dedicate this new account for your time abroad. That way your personal life is kept a bit separate from random strangers you meet throughout your travels.
Messaging Apps
WhatsApp seems to be the most common throughout Southeast Asia. It does display your phone number, if that is a concern to you or not. However, you can create a second account on WhatsApp using the phone number of your local SIM card plan.
WhatsApp : The most common app throughout SE Asia.
Signal : A privacy-focused and secure alternative to WhatsApp.
Facebook Messenger : The other Meta/Facebook owned messing app. It is very popular in SEA.
Zalo : This is a Vietnamese App use only in Vietnam. It has been described as being so common so everyone just keeps their account. However, WhatsApp and other apps are common, too. Zalo critics say that the app is significantly less secure and private compared to any other messaging app.
Line : This is used mostly in Thailand, although it’s a Japanese app. It is the most popular messaging app in Thailand without a doubt.
Telegram : Very common in Cambodia. Users on online forums have mentioned that it is possible for a sender to completely delete the entire conversation (both the sender’s and receiver’s messages) with a click of a button? Apparently, you should take screen shots of any important conversations.
No Stickers On Laptop
Stickers on laptop – peppering stickers all over a laptop – is a fashionable trend. It is a billboard displaying information about ourselves.
We recommend not to have stickers that display information that is too personal and identifiable. Stickers that display where we are from, the university we went to, place we work at, and more.
Smooth talkers and scammers look for ways to personally relate to and phish information from unsuspecting targets, building trust and report. This is a sad reality of the world we live in now.