The man was detained when an officer saw that his profile said he was "looking for loads."

A Canadian man was denied entry to the United States after a U.S. customs officer read his Scruff profile.

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André, a 30-year-old Vancouverite, was planning to visit his boyfriend in New Orleans when he was selected for secondary inspection while going through customs at the airport.

An officer proceeded to take his phone and computer, demanding the passwords for various apps on his devices.

“I didn’t know what to do. I was scared, so I gave them the password and then I sat there for at least an hour or two. I missed my flight,” André said. “He came back and just started grilling me. ‘Is this your email?’ and it was an email attached to a Craigslist account for sex ads. He asked me, ‘Is this your account on Scruff? I was like, ‘Yes, this is me.’”

The officer stumbled upon a description in André’s profile that said he was “looking for loads.” The official assumed this meant he was a sex worker looking to solicit sex for “loads” of cash. The 30-year-old tried to explain what he meant but soon realized that it didn’t matter what he said.

“I could tell just by his nature that he had no intentions of letting me through. They were just going to keep asking me questions looking for something,” he remarked. “So I asked for the interrogation to stop. I asked if I go back to Canada am I barred for life? He said no, so I accepted that offer.”

A month later, André tried to fly to New Orleans again. This time, he brought with him what he thought would be ample proof that he wasn’t a sex worker—pay stubs, bank statements, letters from his employer and a lease agreement. He’d also wiped his phone of dating apps and cleared his browser history.

Ironically, customs officials viewed his preparation as suspicious and as further evidence that he was a sex worker.

“They went through my computer. They were looking through Word documents,” André remembered. “I had nude photos of myself on my phone, and they were questioning who this person was. It was really humiliating and embarrassing.”

“They said, ‘Next time you come through, don’t have a cleared phone,’ and that was it. I wasn’t let through. He said I’m a suspected escort. You can’t really argue with them because you’re trapped.”

Joe Raedle, Getty Images

Unfortunately, André’s situation is not an uncommon one as many non-Americans are faced with the similar choice of protecting their privacy or potentially being blocked from entering the U.S.

“Our mobile devices contain every detail of our lives,” said Esha Bhandari, staff attorney for the speech privacy and technology project at the American Civil Liberties Union. “Financial information, health information, personal relationship information. Some people that travel for business have very sensitive business information, trade secret information.”

“Thus far, CBP has asserted a very broad authority to search visitors to the United States. There aren’t a lot of cases testing the limits of that, especially in this new digital context.”