So you're planning to travel to the US, UK or Australia. If you carry a laptop it's darn annoying to have to extract the laptop form your bag and have it scanned separately at the security checkpoint. Well, it could be a lot worse.

According to this story from The Guardian you might suffer the following:

• Have you laptop's contents searched.
• The laptop being taken for a more thorough examination for several days

Personally, I find this to be an intolerable violation. If I'm travelling with my laptop (as I do regularly), having it confiscated for even a few hours can make a serious dent into the value of my trip. Losing t for a few days would likely render much of a trip useless.

On the upside, there are some things you can do.

• Sign up for an online data storage service and store important files there. Don't use the laptop as the only source of important data.
• Use you MP3 player as a data storage device to carry a spare copy of important files (you can't so this with an iPod touch but a shuffle will do the job. You could use a memory key but an MP3 player os more discrete.
• Put important files on a DVD and mail them to the place your staying ahead of time.
• Clear your web browser's cache and History. The sites you visit are no-one else's business
• Turn the computer off completely before going through the checkpoint (not just sleep mode). this will ensure that temporary data in the swap file is cleared.
• Create an encrypted drive partition on the hard drive and store important, confidential files there.

Do you have any other tips that might be handy?

 Laptop Security