Zdnet: Don’t bring your PDA, laptop, mobile phone or BlackBerry to the Olympics
An article on Zdnet Australia warns people against brining electronic equipment such as PDAs, laptops or mobile phones to Beijing for the Olympics.
The warning seems a little strong to me. You should be careful about using open wireless networks where ever you go traveling and even in your home country. I would be just as concerned or even more concerned about traveling to the United States with a laptop.
China is a fairly safe country and you should take the usual steps to keep a close eye on your possessions at all times, but I wouldn’t have any trouble bringing mobile devices to China. It goes without saying that you should be up to date on all of your security and virus patches on your laptop.
Customs have never checked my laptop when I have visited the country. It could be a different story during the Olympics, but I haven’t seen any announcements made about this.
It’s totally true about the USB disks though. If you buy a cheap USB stick from Bainaohui or Zhongguancun, chances are it’ll have an autorun virus that will try to load itself on your computer as soon as you plug it in - I bought three recently (at separate times from different stalls) and every one of them was infected.
Fortunately I use Linux, but Windows users should always turn off USB autorun before putting a Chinese USB stick into their machine.
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