I've never experienced or heard of any airport checking the private contents of people's devices. Wouldn't that be a massive breach of privacy?

Also how would they know it's pirated or not. Wouldn't they have to check for licenses... Wouldn't that be incredibly time consuming for staff to be checking?

Im in serious doubt this would be a thing.

Veracrypt and use a hidden encrypted partition so you have plausible deniability. Remove the app after. If it’s encrypted it’ll be fine so long as it doesn’t look obvious.

I’ve never heard of border guards checking devices, ever… and definitely not randomly. If you’re paranoid the cloud is a safer option of course, as others have said. Backblaze is great for cost etc.. but definitely encrypt before upload imo.

Depending on how much content you have you could just encrypt your content and upload it to a cloud storage service somewhere.

After its encrypted and safely stored in the cloud delete your local copy then redownload it at your destination.

Aussie airport security care most about food and pest control. If you just have a bag of clothes and a portable HDD in it I would be shocked if they even open the bag up. Just don't bring any food or wood in and you should probably pass right through.

Your odds of getting caught are extremely low, but if you are you will be deported and have your visa cancelled (as an Aussie our border guards really do suck I'm sorry). I genuinely wouldn't risk if it you're moving here. If it was just a holiday and you didn't care too much about getting banned then sure, but definitely not worth risking a work visa on.

The lowest risk way is to put it on a cloud drive and download it on arrival in Oz.

If you've got a light amount of content, it may be easier to just delete it, then redownload at the other end?

If you've got a visa on the line, it's probably not worth it.

Kiwi here, been to Oz couple of times. Never heard of them checking for pirated content. But if it's stressing you, you may appear stressed when checked at customs and that's never good. So for peace of mind I'd just delete it and redownload when you are in.

They didn't check my laptop or mobile phone, however I didn't really hold any illegal materials.

Just don't bring any food, or any other prohibited things, they care more about real things than files you have in your laptop.

I had all my work related files uploaded to proton, just in case (I was going as tourist, planning on studying).

Good luck :)

I'm Australian, when I was younger I didn't even think about the fact that border security might want to check my devices. I flew to Japan and back with 3 external hard drives in my pockets. I took them out and put them in the trays along with everything else and no one asked me anything. Edit: FYI law enforcement, the drives contained no copyright material.

The police don't care.

Anecdotal, and obligatory from the US, but I've never heard of airport security searching electronic devices for illegal content, even when I've travelled abroad. Hell, nowadays we just stick our weed in a carryon bag and TSA doesn't bat an eye, most security agents in any airport I've been through are more concerned about weapons and explosives. Maybe if you get flagged for a deep inspection, but their more likely to inspect your bum than a hard drive in my experience. But that this with a grain of salt from a rando on the internet.

Damn, didn't think this would gain this much traction. Thanks for the suggestions and help everyone.

Judging from the fact that I'm going with a Student Visa, I guess my best course of action is just uploading it to a cloud service. Might not be the most bandwidth efficient, yes, but sure as hell has the best chance of succeeding.

Again, many thanks for the suggestions, seafarers! May your ship sail smooth, mateys.

First world problems? In my country, piracy is the default. Even the government is caught doing so

Id recommend putting the stuff on a online drive like from Proton and not having it on a physical drive.

Australian here. This post reeks of paranoia. Are you moving 10 drives with pirate stickers on them and sweating profusely? If not, don't worry. The border force are only trained to search for biohazards.

A far more likey risk is baggage agents dropping the bag, or leaving it in the rain. But why are you physically moving data anyway? Unlimited gigiabit connections are the norm here, so you could probably redownload whatever it is when you need it, instead of letting readily available copies of pirated media dictate your interactions with law enforcement.

Aus border security care most about weapons and biological matter; dirt, wood, bugs, plants, food etc.

Coming from Indonesia, you may be profiled vis-a-vis potential biological material but showing that you've taken precautions when you packed to make their jobs easier will expedite any bag search.

Unrelated but have an off-site backup! Airport baggage handling are not gentle, and your spinning rust may be DoA.

Do you have an address you can just mail it to?

Just don't have anything that can potentially be "incriminating", from the perspective of a border agent. Never hurts to be overcautious, but being too careless can get you deported. Wipe all devices, and have a few photos and populate your browser history with random non-political content so your devices look "normal". Do not have anything that "criminals" use. Do not have a VPN app that's visible, do not have Tor, do not have any encryption apps. You can download these things once you get in the country. Just act "normal" and you'll be fine crossing customs.

Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine

Hey, I am thinking of moving to Australia soon as well. I've been there once and the security doesn't check any personal devices

Do they usually open up and use your devices to check them for anything? I've not been to Australia, specifically, but I've never been through an airport anywhere else in the world that did anything other than send my stuff through an x-ray machine or metal detector. They've never looked through the software.