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A Disturbing Trend

I’m reading a lot of border crossing stories this month on blogs and social media and I’m noticing a disturbing trend: bragging about pulling one over the border guards, sneaking in illegal things, divulging hidden spots that were not discovered, etc.

It boggles me that people think that they are writing in a vacuum.

My first significant crossing into the US was in 2011. After talking with me, the guards went into the motorhome, did a search, and found my ebook CDs (some were out in plain sight). This gave them the name I use on a daily basis and they used that information to do a Google search on me. They were open about this and showed me what they had found — my blog, my two Facebook accounts, my professional website, everything. And everything they found corroborated what I had told them and after some more chatting, they let me go on my merry way.

My people’s social activity is under their legal name (ie. the name in their passport) and therefore much more easy to find than mine. Governments use social media to corroborate things you tell them. Every provincial healthcare insurance plan admitted to me in 2011 when I was doing my research for the full-timing ebook that they use things like Facebook and blogs to see if people really were in the province when they said they were.

This doesn’t affect just you, but everyone else in line behind you. All it takes is one bored officer searching the web to realise that, hey, people are hiding stuff in their garbage/dirty laundry/plant pots , and next thing you know, searches become more invasive.

This is not paranoia. This is the government being savvy and people being naïve. Please think about what you post online.

14 thoughts on “A Disturbing Trend”

  1. And to other people. I once sat on a plane next to a woman returning from abroad who told me it is good to put something you don’t care if they find close tot he top of your bag so they won’t search all the way down to what you don’t want them to find. Why would she tell me that?

  2. We know “they” have their robots out there reading and watching for keywords. Even if people are not serious, their words do cause extra searches of those following and guarantee a harder time for themselves next year.

    Hiding stuff is so dumb. If they find it you cannot plead ignorance. When we have a little too much of something (booze) and do not want to throw it out, we put it in plain sight and tell them about it. Then we hope for their sense of sympathy and humor to let us keep it. This has worked so far (but maybe no more) 😉

  4. Hope you don’t mean my 2 rotten tomatoes and cucumber which I really didn’t know if it was legal this year or not. Changes from year to year. But after such along wait I decided not to bring it up for discussion with the agent.

    • Maybe, I’ve read so many crossing stories in the last week. The point is that mentioning it in a permanent medium like a blog is not a good idea whatever the excuse/reason.

  5. What you say goes for social media in general. I sometimes cringe at what young people post on their FB pages not even thinking that it could cost them a job someday, or maybe a scholarship to a college they want to attend.

    • Indeed. Back when I was in Vancouver, early spring of ’09, I posted a ‘job wanted’ ad on Craigslist and someone Googled me based on that, brought me in for an interview as a formality, and got me straight to work. A similar thing happened in Lethbridge two years later and new clients Google me all the time. I work hard at presenting a polished, but still human, version of myself online. My entire online presence is more important than my resume.

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