LAS VEGAS–I took my own phone and laptop to the Black Hat USA security conference here, which is often held out as a bad idea.

Before I flew out to Vegas Tuesday, I got more than a few “Are you bringing a burner phone?” and “Are you leaving your laptop at home?” questions.

But bringing burner hardware means dealing with a different set of security settings and doesn’t address the risk of compromise of social-media accounts. And writing thousand-word posts on my phone risks compromising my sanity.

So here’s what I did with my devices instead:

• Put my laptop in airplane mode, then enabled only WiFi to reduce the PC’s attack surface to that minimum.
• For the same reason, turned off Bluetooth and NFC on my phone.
• Set the Windows firewall to block all inbound connections.
• Used a loaner Verizon hot spot for all my data on both my laptop and phone–I even disabled mobile data on the latter gadget, just in case somebody set up a malicious cell site.
• Connected only though a Virtual Private Network on both devices, each of which were set to go offline if the Private Internet Access app dropped that encrypted connection.
• Did not plug in a USB flash drive or charge my phone through anything but the chargers I brought from home.
• Did not download an update, install an app, or type in a password.
• Did not leave my laptop or phone alone in my hotel room.

Combined, this probably rates as overkill–unless the National Security Agency or a comparable nation-state actor has developed an intense interest in me, in which case I’m probably doomed. Using a VPN alone on the conference WiFi should keep my data secure from eavesdropping attempts, on top of the fact that all the sites I use for work already encrypt their connections.

But for my first trip here, I figured I’d rather err on the side of paranoia. (You’re welcome to make your case otherwise in the comments.)

Then I showed up and saw that everybody else had brought the usual array of devices. And a disturbing number of them weren’t even bothering to use encryption for things as basic as e-mail.