I’m going on a work trip to China next month, three days in Beijing. A colleague yesterday started regaling me with scare stories about computer and mobile phone security, and having done a bit of searching around it seems he’s not alone. I’ve found several university websites where they advise their staff not to take laptops or mobiles because of the risk of hacking, to set up disposable email accounts, not to connect back to the university network via VPN, not to switch on mobile phones, etc.
This all sounds a bit tin hat to me. I’m an academic with no corporate secrets or anything dodgy on my computer, and I suspect I’m at just as much of a risk of someone installing a keylogger on my laptop via the wi-fi in a London cafe as I am at a decent hotel in Beijing. Does anyone have any experience of this? Unless there’s a good argument to the contrary I’ll be taking a MacBook Air (running FileVault), iPad, and iPhone.