New US border checks could involve scanning your last five years of social media history here's what you need to know

Date:
Sat, 13 Dec 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Description:
The US government plans to check visitors social media posts and potentially bar them from entry under new proposed rules.

FULL STORY

Tourists visiting the US could soon be subjected to more intense checks than usual, with new proposed rules including in-depth social media screening and other similarly draconian measures.

The rule change has been proposed by the USs Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency. If the plans go ahead, every person visiting the country will have their social media posts from the last five years checked before entry.

As well as that, it will be mandatory to hand over your email addresses and phone numbers from the last five years, as well as the names, addresses, numbers and birth dates of your family members. Youll also need to provide a photograph of yourself, plus biometric data including your fingerprints, iris scans and even DNA.

That could be a significant headache for travelers and could potentially
result lengthy queues and delays when trying to enter the US, depending on
how it's implemented. Tech privacy rights have become an increasing concern
for users in recent years, with sales of the best VPN apps over the past 12 months hitting new heights as governments around the world seek to collect
ever more information on citizens.

Instead of being a place to connect with friends and watch cat memes, many people will likely be concerned that social media is turning into a place of surveillance and the CBPs move isnt doing anything to allay those fears.

A controversial idea

Privacy advocates are naturally concerned about the new proposals, but President Donald Trump doesn't seem too worried about the potential impacts
on tourists or on US tourism.

According to the BBC , Trump said: "We just want people to come over here,
and safe. We want safety. We want security. We want to make sure we're not letting the wrong people come enter our country."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a group that works to protect digital privacy rights, naturally has other views, as reported by the New York Times. It said that the CBPs proposal would "exacerbate civil liberties harms".

The group added that such a move has not proven effective at finding
terrorists and other bad guys. But it has chilled the free speech and invaded the privacy of innocent travelers, along with that of their American family, friends and colleagues.

The proposed rules would also, in theory, be trivial to bypass. If a person
is concerned about falling foul of the restrictions, theyd simply need to delete their social media posts from the last five years and clear their
email inbox. There are even digital footprint services that can do this for you.

It also wouldnt be surprising to see many people creating secondary social media profiles with no post history and then providing those to
administration officials. The CBP says its proposal will be subject to 60
days of public consultation. Anyone concerned about what it might lead to can make their thoughts known by emailing 'CBP_PRA@cbp.dhs.gov'.

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Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/computing/social-media/new-us-border-checks-could-in volve-scanning-your-last-five-years-of-social-media-history-heres-what-you-nee d-to-know

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