{"id":140989,"date":"2019-06-06T15:37:39","date_gmt":"2019-06-06T15:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sftarticles.wpenginepowered.com\/en\/?p=140989"},"modified":"2025-07-01T21:50:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T04:50:15","slug":"visiting-or-moving-to-the-us-trump-wants-to-see-your-social-media-data-before-hell-let-you-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/visiting-or-moving-to-the-us-trump-wants-to-see-your-social-media-data-before-hell-let-you-in\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting or moving to the US? Trump wants to see your social media data before he\u2019ll let you in"},"content":{"rendered":"

We\u2019ve written a lot in the past about China\u2019s scary use of modern technology. In particular, we\u2019ve been frightened by the authoritarian social credit score it gives all Chinese citizens<\/a> and the limits it places on those with low scores. It is easy to think, because China is so far away, that it isn\u2019t really something we should worry about at home. But what makes China\u2019s actions so scary is that they could easily be taken up in other countries by other governments. First, they came for the Chinese\u2026<\/p>\n

Well, now it seems that these draconian types of laws have just taken a huge step closer to home as the U.S. State Department has just made a rather chilling announcement.<\/p>\n

All Visa applicants to the US will have to hand over all of their social media and email details from the last five years<\/h2>\n

\"Trump<\/p>\n

Anybody planning to visit or migrate to the U.S. on any kind of visa now has to give the State Department all of their social media usernames, previous email addresses, and phone numbers from the previous five years. According to the Associated Press<\/a>, the move was first proposed in March 2018, but has only just taken effect after the new forms, including the new \u201csocial media identifiers\u201d requests, were approved.<\/p>\n

The new move marks a huge expansion of the Trump administration’s screening procedures for anybody coming to the U.S. Until this recent move, these types of requests were only made to people who\u2019d been flagged as needing extra attention. These flags could come from a number of reasons including traveling to areas controlled by terrorist organizations. The AP reports that around 65,000 applicants fell into this category each year, but that now almost 15 million visa applicants<\/strong>, mostly for non-immigrant visas, will be required to hand over their social media details.<\/p>\n

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Protect your privacy, choose this search engine over Google<\/p>\r\n Read Now \u25ba<\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n

The new visa forms will list the most prominent social networks, but applicants will also be prompted to include the details for any other networks that aren\u2019t explicitly mentioned. As yet, there are no details on how the State Department will ensure details of all accounts have been included in applications but speaking to The Hill<\/a>, a State Department spokesperson warned of \u201cserious immigration consequences\u201d<\/strong> for those caught not complying. These consequences could potentially include visa withdrawal and refused entry.<\/p>\n

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You now have to show much more than your passport, if you want to enter the US<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As well as the scary implications that come from the U.S. government doing its best China impression, there is also the huge potential risk that comes from compiling such huge amounts of personal data in one place. We\u2019ve seen time and time again, huge data breaches that have put user privacy and security at risk<\/a> and as ZDNet points out<\/a>, U.S. Customs doesn\u2019t exactly have a\u00a0 flawless record when it comes to data protection. A report in December<\/a> showed that border agents hadn\u2019t been deleting the data they\u2019d collected from personal electronic device searches.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We\u2019re not just walking down a scary path with this one, it also seems like a disaster waiting to happen at any moment.<\/p>\n

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Ultimate Online Privacy Guide<\/p>\r\n Read Now \u25ba<\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/div>\r\n <\/a>\r\n <\/div>\r\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All Visa applicants to the U.S. will have to hand over all of their social media and email details from the last five years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9073,"featured_media":140998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[1015],"tags":[1560,1624,1027,1035],"usertag":[839],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-140989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-email","tag-privacy","tag-security","tag-social-media","usertag-vpn"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9073"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140989"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325908,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140989\/revisions\/325908"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140989"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=140989"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=140989"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=140989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}