How does using a burner phone work?
 

If you are asked for your phone, and you hand over one that's blank of activity, are you more likely to have an issue as you are obviously exercising your rights to privacy?

What if you wipe off your main profile, but keep an innocuous one on there? Is that deceptive?

​​​​​As a dual citizen, I have crossed the US/Canada border probably hundreds of times, but not much since Covid. I am in the US. Presumably I am safe from this nonsense, but one never knows nowadays.

A CBP spokesperson has said a wiped phone will be suspicious as will recently 'cleaned up' social media profiles.

Coincidentally, I was out of country late last year and my phone was stolen. I was able to replace it pretty quickly, but not all the data and it was a huge inconvenience. For many reasons, I had decided that I won't travel with it again - I'll get a burner. I never contact anyone in the US when I'm traveling. I am fully prepared for CBP to challenge me and I will tell the truth - I'm carrying a burner for the same reason I don't take gas credit cards or unneeded ID cards or keys out of country if I don't need them while I'm gone. Just more stuff at risk of getting lost or stolen.

It might help that I still prefer taking photos on a P&S instead of on the phone, so there will be a perfectly reasonable explanation for why there are no photos on the phone.

That's my plan. I fully expect to get challenged. I'm trying to treat it like SSSS - there was never any apparent logic to it, there really wasn't much a traveler seemed to be able to do to avoid getting targeted for the treatment. You just hope you aren't one of the unlucky ones that gets targeted once and then is targeted for life.

Not a dual citizen, but these are great questions. I got a burner phone a while ago because I was being hospitalized and didn’t want to bring my fancy iPhone to the hospital. I plan to use the burner phone for travel from here on it, but definitely has some personal stuff on it so it doesn’t look like I’m necessarily trying to hide anything. While the US continues to hassle actual citizens, I feel it’s better safe than sorry. I realize the border people can look up anything they want about me and see that I have online profiles.