As we all know, privacy starts with security, which leads many people in this community to seek out secure services / software, some relentlessly so.
Then life happens, and suddenly you find yourself naked in a back alley in Hanoi (or if you already live in the region, you might instead find yourself naked in Santiago de Chile), stripped of all belongings and at best some vague recollection of an unusually good night. What is your strategy to regain access to what you need to get back home?
An no, the staff at the hotel does not recognize you.
Upload a keepassXC vault to a cloud service like drop box. I have an encrypted version of my 2fa authentication config file in my keepass vault. If i where to loose everything i could recover logins. Remember Never upload a unencrypted file to the cloud!
As an old retiree I know that life is incompatible with long time plans, life always has other ones. More important to have enough mental sources to be capable to make the bestt of current situations.
In a word, prevention.
If a good night out includee waking up hung over in a foreign country, it’s time to head to an AA meeting.
Call the embassy. This has nothing to do with privacy.
Farming
thoughts and prayers
I’m thankfully currently not in that situation, but while the situation is meant as a joke, the question is serious.
If I stored everything I needed on a Google account that’s not 2FA-enabled and with a password you remember in your head, things are not that bleak in this particular situation, although it is hardly a convenience that makes it worth it to have that kind of setup in my opinion (and I would assume to most people frequenting this community).
When was the last time you tried to access a Google account from another device in a new location? They won’t let you in, you’ll be in a maze of fake “wrong password” errors, recovery emails that never arrive because they have nevet been sent and whatever they came up with this year.
guess i live in Hanoi now
The password to my home server is a salted hash of my primary (memorized) password, so I can recover it from any computer that can run the hash function. From there I can access the rest of my saved passwords, bookmarks, etc.
That’s simple and smart. I had played around with the thought of storing encrypted versions of my password manager vault freely available, and making the password a Ceasar cipher of the first letters of each chapter of some book I am sure to find freely online. Not so simple and smart, but at least some fun. Except maybe when you actually need to use it.
My brother ended up lost in a major city, 3 hours away from home and our parents. He didn’t know where he parked his car, just that it was “at a hotel”. Drugs were almost certainly involved.
His strategy was to wander around asking to borrow strangers’ cell phones until he ended up in a gas station run by an immigrant couple who were OMG lovely. They let him use their phone and they fed him until my parents could drive over and pick him up.
My parents found his car by posting “lost car” ad on Craigslist with a reward.
Anyways, my strategy’s probably to find a local library or equivalent and email my partner and friends a “please help” message. Hopefully someone lends/gives me clothes along the way.
Edit: oops, I said 3 miles. It was 3 hours. Updated.
I’d start by installing arch
On what computer, and where did you get the ISO from?
Arch people always carry both with them at all times.
I don’t think privacy or digital accounts would be any concern to me at that point. I’d mostly want to get somewhere safe, then get my passport or a new one, and get home. Then I can deal with the loss of devices.
I host my password manager (VW) on my server. The password of my server is on said password manager. Am I screwed?
I have ONE password written down on paper, laminated, and hidden in a spot where only the wife and I know. Can you guess what it’s for?
hunter2 can both be stored in a password mananger and be remembered!
Maybe Assist America. They should be able to help with documents, travel, medical, and extraction.
Otherwise, locals, police, churchs, embasy, etc.
Lawyers Guns and Money intensifies
Y’all know they give you backup codes for your 2FA, right?
Coded printout in my fire box. Encrypted version on my home laptop. Worst case scenario is losing my phone and passport on day 1 of a long trip.
You also don’t have access to your fire box in that Hanoi alley.
Of course, but at that point I have no passport and I’m the victim of a crime, so I have to go to the embassy to get a temp passport and ask them to help me figure out how to get a new flight and cancel credit cards.
At this point the question is where are my house keys to get in and pay a taxi guy mad cash from the airport to my house?
