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Can somebody recommend good charging cables with the data lanes disabled? Would put my mind at ease when I'm traveling.


You could do that, but then you'd need to forgo USB Power Delivery, Qualcomm quick charging, etc.

One thing I've heard other comments mention here is a USB condom (USB data blocker). It's just a male to female adapter with only the power lines patched through, not data lines.


If you have a powerbank with you (which may be empty), you could also charge the powerbank using the untrusted power source, and at the same time charge the phone via powerbank to "sanitize" the source. This way you could still benefit from quickcharging.


Yep, this is what I usually end up doing while traveling. The battery doesn't care about the data lane even if the charger is somehow malicious, and my devices get pure juice.


Do you have references for powerbanks that support QuickCharge?


Most of them do nowadays. I used both Anker and Xiaomi and both were excellent.


I can vouch for usb condoms.

Not only do they allow safe use of Arbitrary power ports but they also allow me to charge my phone from my laptop without syncing for updating things…


USB condom LOL :D

Got any links for those?



Thanks for exercising being snarky!

I very obviously meant concrete brands and models that people would recommend.

I'm touched that you think I can't search for stuff on the net. :D


Your "very obviously" wasn't read that way here.

Synctstop and Int3.cc seem to be popular. The latter is recommended by Bruce Schneier here: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2018/12/bad_consumer_...


Somethink like this, it is adapter with data lanes removed, for charging in public places. There are other tools like the ones listed on the hak5 site also. https://maltronics.com/products/usb-protector The guy running the site also has a youtube channel focused on security related tech news https://www.youtube.com/c/Seytonic/featured.


I can't find any on Google that specifically are made without the data lane. Maybe these magnetic ones don't do data[0]. Could also try burning the data lanes on the lightning part of the cable[0] (although you might have issues if it's a lightning-to-C cable, I would guess it uses the data lanes for power negotiation).

0: https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/3-in-1-cable-led-ligh...

1: https://nyansatan.github.io/lightning/


Good warning, thank you.

I don't care much about quick charging when in a hotel room though. I just want to make sure my phone isn't being probed while I'm sleeping.

And when I need quick charging, I have the right cables and a strong external battery.




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