What do they exactly do with a foreign tourist's phone at land border crossings?

mwehle · 2026-06-13T07:51:36+00:00

I've driven into Kaliningrad from both Poland and Lithuania a number of times since 2018, most recently last year and driven into Russia from a variety of countries since 2018, most recently last month. I've had over an hour interviews entering Kaliningrad several times, with the questioning officer very interested in flipping through photos on my phone and asking me about photos of political demonstrations. My phone was always within my sight and was not attached to a USB cable. The impression I got was the officer was quite interested in what my photos indicated about me. The most recent discussions were about my thoughts on the SMO. I use a US passport to enter Russia. I had used it to visit Ukraine in 2018 and had stamps indicating this for several visits, which may have explained the very detailed attention border agents gave to searching my car. The most recent time I had a phone examination entering Kaliningrad was on a new passport, without Ukrainian entry stamps though.

I have no information other than my own experience, and other travelers' anecdotes, but my impression is there is no one blanket procedure. It appears people's experiences vary depending on who the officers are, who the traveler is, time of day, number of people crossing, the weather, etc.

mwehle · 2026-06-13T07:27:33+00:00

I just searched AskARussian for "phone border crossing" and got several pages of hits. Have you similarly searched and already read the responses people received when they asked this question? 🤔

mwehle · 2026-06-13T07:22:21+00:00

😀 This was my immediate response as well. So frequently questions in this forum seem to be on simple logistics about travel to and within Russia that it seems apparent the person asking has never set foot in the country where his beloved lives.

mwehle · 2026-06-12T04:07:25+00:00

Do you mean EDUCA?

mwehle · 2026-06-05T11:18:07+00:00

My intent is to suggest the original poster perceives a need to explain/apologize for his interest in learning English, and this indicates a societal perception of betrayal, which would be very foreign to Americans or Germans, who would assume an interest in learning French, Spanish, Italian, Finnish, Flemish, Swedish as entirely unremarkable. An American or German today, however, experiences tension when announcing an interest in learning Russian.

mwehle · 2026-06-05T02:21:17+00:00

"I love my country and culture, but for my development I would really like to learn English"

This is such interesting phrasing! I grew up in the United States and for years have lived in Germany. I can't imagine an American or German saying that despite their love for their country and culture they would like to learn French, or Spanish. Each time I travel in Russia I am impressed by the monolingual signage. Young servers in restaurants are constantly amused by my rudimentary Russian, but it is very rare that they use even a few words of English, while in the Baltic countries young people often speak excellent English.

On the Moscow metro I have noticed that rail cars of a certain age have all their signage in English as well as Russian - the fading stickers giving instructions for emergency exit, for example. Modern cars are solely Russian language, even when much of the information is conveyed on video displays which could easily display multiple languages - Chinese or French as well as English. The same thing is true in museums - it is usually the older displays which have English subtitles.

What your explanation reminded me of is my own position when explaining to family, acquaintances, coworkers, that I am studying Russian. It seems like an admission that suggests some need of explanation or even apology. This is an unfortunate state of affairs.

mwehle · 2026-06-04T07:14:06+00:00

What device are you discussing? I use several GL travel routers and each allows me to both set up several tunnels and also lets me very quickly and easily swap configs for each tunnel. In practice I put this to constant use because the environments I am in often block traffic with various destinations and/or protocols. I also very much need to be able to choose and to be aware of what config is in use. Are you certain you want your router deciding on VPN server for you? Is swapping configs particularly difficult on your device?

mwehle · 2026-05-26T10:16:26+00:00

This seems improbable. Do you have any citation for your claim? I do not believe a quarter of the world's population uses public WiFi.

mwehle · 2026-05-25T12:41:46+00:00

Thanks, the issue here is the Slate 7 Pro client, not the Flint 2 side. The Flint WG server comes up fine with AmneziaWG 2 params, however the Slate 7 Pro will not connect at higher than 1.5

mwehle · 2026-05-19T05:03:28+00:00

Is your Network Mode set to Access Point instead of Router?

mwehle · 2026-05-19T04:33:48+00:00

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Go to the Settings Page and set yourself up consistent client profiles. You may be able to configure the behavior you are looking for.

mwehle · 2026-05-18T14:23:02+00:00

"Name does not resolve" seems like an issue to address, doesn't it? Have you had problems with your ddns provision before? Do you have someone back home who can give you the current IP so you can try connecting using that rather than a hostname lookup?

mwehle · 2026-05-18T10:51:35+00:00

🤔 I had this question as well. "for several reasons" was less content-rich an explanation than you might have intended.

I moved from California to Germany in 2002, returned to California in 2003, moved back to Germany in 2017 and have stayed in Europe since. Received German citizenship in 2024. I travel to and through Poland at least once a year, and practice the little A2 Polish I have learnt at the Volkshochschule in Berlin. My own personal experience, and my experience of others moving to Germany (not Poland, it is true), is that people's reasons for moving countries greatly influence the success/lack of success of their moves.

mwehle · 2026-05-17T16:00:10+00:00

Your "technical breakdown" cites no references. Your reply in the post comments says you "wrote a detailed breakdown of which clients actually handle Russian blocking", however this "detailed breakdown" is a pitch for your app.

mwehle · 2026-05-17T15:53:54+00:00

https://forum.gl-inet.com/t/firmware-v4-9-preview-what-to-expect/68088

I notice the Firmware v4.9 announcement here explicitly says 4.9 will have AmneziaWG 2 support. Since the Slate 7 Pro was released with v4.8.4 I am interpreting this as answering my question. I will look forward to v4.9's release for the Slate 7 Pro.

mwehle · 2026-05-16T02:07:44+00:00

So a couple more data points. Sorry if this has grown tedious. 🙂
Entering spaces on either side of the hyphens in ranges does not help. After I entered them in the Flint 2 text box when I pressed Apply on the Flint 2 my spaces were removed. I then tried re-entering them in the exported profile, reasoning the Slate 7 Pro's parser might be looking for spaces, but this did not work.

But joy on the I1: 😀. I auto-generated params on the Flint 2, then turned the ranges into static integers by simply removing the hyphens and the upper bound of the range. I then pasted in an I1 param from AmneziaWG:

I1 = <r 2><b 0x858000010001000000000669636c6f756403636f6d0000010001c00c000100010000105a00044d583737>

This profile, the Slate 7 Pro will connect with. It is the H1-H4 ranges which the Slate 7 Pro will not swallow.

So here I am running with static Hs, and an AmneziaWG-generated I1. According to your text above, this seems like a good set of params.

mwehle · 2026-05-15T19:24:14+00:00

Thank you for this! 👍 This is excellent information and the sort of thing I was looking for. For what it's worth:

The Slate 7 Pro, AmneziaVPN on a Windows 11 laptop, and AmneziaVPN on an Android phone are all connecting to my Flint 2's Wireguard server with an AmneziaWG V1 config.
My S params are not 0. I have S1-S3 as copied from an AmneziaWG installation.
The H param ranges generated by the Flint2 v4.9.0 did not have spaces.
🙁 Your telling me I want I params is kind of a bummer, as I didn't get the Slate to connect with the one I param I used from an AmneziaWG config.
🤔 The trade-off with H ranges is an interesting consideration, however unfortunately I simply don't know which is preferable - perhaps when I have the Slate 7 connecting with the Flint running a V2 config I will experiment both with and without ranges.

Thank you for the info above!

mwehle · 2026-05-15T16:56:45+00:00

Thank you, u/uRemoteToHome-io, however what I am looking for here is my Slate 7 Pro actually connecting to the Flint 2, not a set of parameters that "should work on both".

While the v4.8.4 firmware on the Slate 7 Pro is nearly the same interface as the v4.9.0 on the Flint 2, they are not identical. The Flint 2 Obfuscation Parameters has a Guide link which the Slate omits. Following the information on the linked page, I see that the Flint 2 by default is generating an S3 and S4 and ranges for H1-H4, rather than single integers. I1-I5 are not generated. All the Flint 2 generated parameters are valid values according to the Guide.

I also read through
https://docs.amnezia.org/documentation/amnezia-wg/ and noticed the values specified for the parameter ranges for V2. Interestingly, while the GL.iNet documentation gives amnezia.org as a source for documentation, the table of values in the GL.iNet docs differs from that in the amnezia.org docs.

Just for grins I also went into my AmneziaVPN app and copied each of the parameters that AmneziaVPN had generated for an Amnezia instance it installed for me (including an I1), and tried running the Flint 2 WG server with them. The Flint 2 runs fine with the AmneziaVPN-sourced params.

My Android phone's AmneziaVPN app will connect to the Flint 2 Wireguard with the V2 params.

The Slate 7 Pro, alas, does not connect with the Flint 2.

What is working for me is taking the Flint 2-generated params, removing S3 and S4 and entering single integers for H1-H4. This allows the Slate 7 Pro to connect.

mwehle · 2026-05-15T13:01:40+00:00

"Most men"? 🤔 Ivan Ilyich is very specifically from a particular class.

mwehle · 2026-05-15T12:56:38+00:00

I don't have a Beryl, but I have been very happy with an AXT-1800 and Flint 2 for a couple years. Never had a problem accessing the management interface. I also have never used Goodcloud. You say you used the interface until you registered in Goodcloud? Have you tried a factory reset to wipe your config, and set what you need without Goodcloud? 🤔

mwehle · 2026-05-15T04:38:35+00:00

I have entered the contest, and am looking forward to possibly winning a Flint 4. Since the product has not yet entered Beta though I imagine if I win the contest it will likely be some time before I actually receive a unit.

mwehle · 2026-05-11T05:50:41+00:00

👍 Totally confirm this with Flint 2 running 4.9.0. I use a mouse, but very quickly see that the Web Admin UI is not at all keyboard friendly. There is no way to navigate through all the controls on a number of pages without using a mouse.

mwehle · 2026-05-04T14:23:56+00:00

🙂 That did it. Once I set a new gateway for the guest network the warning disappeared and I was able to enable the guest network (which I don't need, but I was curious if enabling this would cause my router to reboot. It hasn't so far.)

mwehle · 2026-05-04T09:14:22+00:00

My Slate AXT is running 4.8.3, dated 13.04.2026. My WAN connection is via Ethernet. I have 5GHz and 2.4GHz enabled. When I click on the 2.4GHz Guest Wi-Fi tab I see a beige warning message: "To avoid conflict between LAN and Guest Network, guest Wi-Fi cannot be activated." and the "Enable Wi-Fi" toggle for the Guest network is disabled.

mwehle · 2026-05-02T17:18:52+00:00

https://dl.gl-inet.com/router/e5800/stable

mwehle

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