u/kndb

I see stories on Reddit of American border agents requiring visitors to unlock their smartphones when crossing the U.S. border in ports of entry, I.e. international airports. I am curious about my rights if a border agent asks me to unlock my phone. Do I have the right to refuse? Or what is my best recourse in that situation?

I am an American citizen. I will be flying in with my wife, who is a legal permanent resident. I would assume that she has fewer options to refuse that request.

Can someone please shed some light on it?

I’ll be staying abroad for about a year. I’m wondering if there’s a way for me to pay for the Kenya Power electricity tokens for my apartment in Nairobi while I’m abroad?

I might have to go abroad for about a year. Is there a way to keep my Safaricom cell number while I’m away?

PS. I don’t have anyone local to pay for it for me.

We had a horrendous experience a couple of months ago while leaving Germany when we missed our flight because of a mile long immigration line to pass the EES (Entry-Exit-System.)

This time we are flying from Africa to the U.S. through an airport in the Western Europe. I haven’t purchased a ticket yet but I know that it would be either Germany, Netherlands or France.

Does anyone know if we will be still required to pass through that EES?

I’m getting a job offer and need to relocate to Vancouver, WA and need to rent a one bedroom apartment in the area. I’ve been checking on apartment listing services (around Hazel Dell area) and I see a lot of bad reviews. Can someone recommend a quiet apartment complex with low crime that goes for $1.2k to $1.6k/mo for a one bedroom apartment?

Saw these in the Account Review Inquiries when I was checking my credit report. I have no idea what these are:

Savvymoney Inc.
-----------------------
4160 DUBLIN BLVD., SUITE 250
DUBLIN, CA 94568
(844) 513-5777

Creditwise Capital1 TU-C
-----------------------
CAPITAL ONE PO BOX 30285PO BOX 85870
SALT LAKE CITY, UT 84130
(800) 227-4825

Consumerinfo.Com
-----------------------
475 ANTON BLVD
COSTA MESA, CA 92626
(888) 397-3742

Factact Free Disclosure
-----------------------
PO BOX 1000
CHESTER, PA 19016
(800) 888-4213

Fiservcheckfree Corp
-----------------------
6000 PERIMETER DR
DUBLIN, OH 43017
(877) 347-8346

Travelers via Travelers
-----------------------
PO BOX 2906
HARTFORD, CT 06104
(800) 550-7717

Shall I be concerned?

Sorry, I'm kinda clueless here. When someone enters the US for the first time when their green card has been approved abroad, what address are you supposed to give them? Can you give them a mailing address in the same state as the residential one? We are planning to travel a bit after entering the US (within the country) and all our mail will go to my virtual mailbox so that we won't miss it while being away.

So I received the following email. There's no link to download that Questionnaire or anything. What am I supposed to do there?

>The Social Security Administration (SSA) relies on Social Security benefit recipients to report events that may affect their benefits. To verify the status of beneficiaries with a foreign address on record, SSA contacts these individuals annually or biennially (every two years).

>The first mailings for Calendar Year (CY) 2026 of the Foreign Enforcement Questionnaires (FEQ) (Forms SSA-7161 and SSA-7162) were released on July 2, 2026. These mailings are directed to Social Security beneficiaries who meet one or more of the following criteria:

>Age 90 or older

>Have a Representative Payee

>Social Security Number (SSN) ends in 00–49 

>Please note: Individuals in countries on the USPS International Mail Service suspension list are excluded from the Foreign Enforcement Questionnaire (FEQ) mailing. Social Security beneficiaries in those countries are not required to respond.

>Recipients are required to respond within 45 days of receiving the questionnaire. You may respond in one of the following ways:

>By Telephone: Call the dedicated international SSA line at +1-855-522-6936 (7:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time) to complete the FEQ by phone.

>By Mail: Return the completed FEQ in the envelope provided to:

>**Form SSA-**7162

>Social Security Administration

>P.O. Box 7162

>Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 18767-7162, U.S.A.

> 

>**Form SSA-**7161

>P.O. Box 7161

>Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania 18767-7161, U.S.A.

> 

>By Courier: Return the completed FEQ to:

>Social Security Administration

>Wilkes-Barre Direct Operations Center

>Attention: FEQ Analyst – Courier Service

>150 E. Mountain Dr. Room 341

>

>Wilkes Barre, PA 18702-7997

>Important: Do not email the FEQ form. If you are unable to return the form using the provided envelope, you may use an international mail or package delivery service to send the completed FEQ directly to your servicing Federal Benefits Unit (FBU), not to the U.S. PO Box. Please be aware that mailing the form directly to the FBU may increase processing time.

>In the absence of a response to the initial contact, SSA will send a second mailer to non-responders. Failure to comply with the Foreign Enforcement Program requirements will result in the suspension of benefits.

>If you do not receive the form but believe that you are required to complete it, please contact your servicing Federal Benefits Unit (FBU). 

>For additional information, please visit the official Social Security website:

>Life events | SSA

>What to Do When Someone Dies | SSA

>Thank you for helping us maintain the accuracy of your Social Security records and for fulfilling your reporting responsibilities.

Need some advice. I’m a U.S. citizen that is married to a non-U.S. citizen. We married online in the state of Utah during Covid. Since then I’ve been mostly living abroad with her. (I work fully remote for a U.S. company that let us save a lot and also travel the world.)

We applied for a U.S. green card for my wife that she just received. So now we need to go to the U.S. to get her paperwork and possibly employment set up for her. So we will probably be staying in the U.S. for a few months and then be leaving to our second home in her country. And rinse and repeat to comply with the green card rules. (Until she gets her citizenship.)

As you know, living in the U.S. without a car is close to impossible. At first I was wondering if we should buy an average car that can get us around and then park it at my cousin’s place while we are out of the country. But then someone brought up the depreciation on that car while it’s parked there versus leasing a car.

I’ve never leased a car before. So what’s your thoughts or suggestions in that case?

What the title says. Our Safaricom Home high speed (fiber) internet is under my wife’s account and all SMS go to her phone. What seems to be happening is that she doesn’t see those notifications and the service gets cut off because we forget to pay for it. I wonder if there’s a way for me to set up an email to receive those notifications? Or do they even have an online portal to check?

Say, if I go to https://ftp.example.com, provided that example-dot-com is my website that is hosted with Dream Host, Firefox shows this message:

https://preview.redd.it/hdu075986uch1.png?width=1964&format=png&auto=webp&s=5c2583f809bfcb3cdc98754dc32d16c6fd1581ec

>Be careful. Something doesn’t look right.

>Firefox spotted a potentially serious security issue with ftp.example.com. Someone pretending to be the site could try to steal things like credit card info, passwords, or emails.

I'm not using FTP (which is disabled in their control panel.) I only have SFTP enabled for uploading files, that I don't do via the web browser.

How do I disable the ftp subdomain from my site so that ftp.example.com showed a nonexistent page instead of that warning?

PS. The domain name is not hosted with Dreamhost. I tried to check its DNS records, but it doesn't seem to show that I set up any. So I'm not even sure if it's a dream host of the domain registrar's issue.

I just learned today that both Wise and Revolut offer what they call an “Airport Lounge Pass”. The availability depends on your country. You can check here:

Wise app - cards - travel hub (mine shows: $40 USD/per entry)

Revolut - lifestyle (at the bottom) - lounges - get lounge entries (mine shows: $41/per entry)

I’m curious if anyone tried it and is it worth it?

Also it seems like it’s just for the holder of the Wise account. I wonder if I can also add my gf? (She doesn’t have a Wise or a Revolut account.)

We stayed at this guy’s apartment in Vienna. The reason I picked it was because of multiple five star reviews. Unfortunately it was definitely short of five stars. Before we left the guy sent me a long pre written message asking for a five star review with links where to do it etc. I hesitated at first because there was no way I would give him five stars. I was mostly concerned about him retaliating in return. But eventually I left a three star review and explained the issues.

It’s been a month. And since I left my review I never got one from the host. So I’m wondering if there’s a way he could see my review before he decided whether to leave his or not?

PS. I think we were good guests. We kept the apartment clean, threw out the trash, never broke anything, didn’t party and overall followed his rules. In total I’ve never had a bad review from an Airbnb host.

I’ve been living with my gf for over 4 years. No kids but we are living in the same apartment. I’ve noticed that the relationship is not what it used to be. We are getting into these petty flights. Nothing physical but just situations when one pisses the other person off and we may not talk for a day or two. Sometimes longer.

I started putting those days on the calendar to see the frequency of these fights. And now I’m curious to compare if that is a “normal” thing or not.

Thus my question, how many times a month (or a year) do you have arguments with your significant other that you don’t talk to each other for a day or two?

I've deactivated the default admin account on my Synology NAS, but I'm still getting emails of someone trying to break in:

>[192.168.1.101] Your account [admin] on DYNNAME is being protected

>There has been 5 failed attempts to sign in to your account [admin] on DYNNAME from untrusted devices within the last 1 minutes.
As a precaution, you can now only sign in to your account from trusted devices that you have successfully signed in from previously.
This protection will be canceled automatically at Thu Jun 18 12:27:05 2026 . If you wish to cancel the protection now, go to Control Panel > Security > Protection > Auto Block. From DYNNAME

Any idea what else shall I do?

Don’t ask me how I know. There’s a new crop of laptops that will be coming to the market, mostly designed for enterprises (ie work issued laptops) that will have the out of band management hardware. In a nutshell, this is a small operating system that runs independently from the main OS (Windows in this case) that can do lots of behind the scenes actions. Stuff like locking or unlocking the laptops, executing commands, etc. pretty much what a RAT (remote access Trojan) does but on a “sanctioned side”. I know that Dell and HP are actively working on it. There will probably be more companies on board.

The worst news for DNs though (that are hiding their work location) is that one of the features that is touted by that hardware is to be able to tell the physical location of the device, even if the device is off. And since it runs independently of the main OS none of the Beryl AX ip hiding techniques, including turning off WiFi would work, because the out of band hardware will use cellular modem that is built in. 5G or even backwards compatible to 4G. I’m not sure if that hardware will also have a built in GPS or not and how will it be able to detect the location? Cellular or GPS. If anyone knows, please share.

These laptops are not on the market yet but they are coming soon. I’m not sure how it will affect my remote work, because I am one of those DNs. I guess my advice would be to delay upgrading to the latest work laptop for as long as you can.

Any thoughts?

My checked luggage was lost during a connecting flight so I'm wondering who was at fault there. Do baggage handlers work for a specific airline at an airport, or do they just get randomly assigned to load/unload luggage for whatever flight that lands there?

PS. Asking just from curiosity.

I’m not sure if there’s an Airbnb etiquette, but we always try to wash and dry the towels and bed sheets before we leave. But now I’m wondering if that is expected, because Airbnb seems to charge a cleaning fee.

So I’m staying in Vienna, Austria now and I just bought the Mudi-7 device. While testing it I took the prepaid Magenta KLAX M SIM card that I bought for my Android phone and put it into the Mudi-7. The SIM was recognized but almost immediately I received an SMS to the Mudi that my data was exhausted and that I needed to buy more. At the same time when I tried to check the internet speeds when I connected via Mudi’s WiFi the download speed was showing a regular 100+ mb/s but the upload speed was less than 1 mb/s. Which is not what it was before.

Then I put the SIM back into my Android phone and after a while it started working as before. With download and upload speeds being normal. Up speed being around 70 mb/s.

I also checked my balance on that prepaid Meganta card by dialing *100# (or something of that nature) from the Android phone and it showed that my data plan is OK and that I still had 40 GB left.

This made me ask, does Mudi-7 require its own prepaid SIM card that is somehow different from the one that I was using for my Android phone?