Next time you apply for a visa, be ready to share your social media accounts with immigration and border security officials across many countries who would want to check your profile information, posts etc and match it with the information you have submitted to get the travel document, according to a ToI report.
This will help authorities to check whether you have links to terrorist organisations and hate groups, which may contravene the laws of the country you intend to visit.
Countries like US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Africa are tracking social media accounts of people applying for visas, residency or work permits. Canadian consular officials processing permanent residency applications have issued rejection letters when the information provided did not match the same on the applicants' social media accounts.
In September, 2017, immigration officials in New Zealand used pseudonyms to open social media accounts to verify information relating to visa applicants.
Membership of banned organisations and hate speech on social media has seen several visa denials by UK and South Africa. An American pastor was denied a South African visa because of his anti-gay rhetoric on social media.
And the scrutiny is getting tighter. In March, US State Department had proposed that all visa applicants need to list all Facebook and Twitter accounts they own over the last five years though this plan doesn't include asking to list passwords.
In addition to this, in some countries, including US, immigration officials have the authority to search your devices like mobile phones and laptops.
US border officials conducted 30,200 searches of devices in 2017, an increase of 58% compared to 2016. The first six months of this year saw, 15,000 such searches conducted.
Even in absence of suspicion of criminal conduct, a basic search of an electronic device can be carried out while an advanced search can see the device confiscated and sent to a forensic lab when there is suspicion that the person is a threat to national security.
Under the present US law, officials can only search the data stored on the device and they are not authorized to search for information stored on the cloud via the device. So, travellers are advised to remove sensitive data from their devices and store them on the cloud before travelling.
