The US plans to check the social media history of travelers from dozens of countries

The proposal states that ESTA applicants “will be required to provide their social networks for the last five years,” but does not elaborate on what specific information will be required.

The current ESTA requires travelers to provide relatively limited information and a one-time payment of $40. It is open to citizens of about 40 countries, including Chile, Spain, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, Australia and Japan, and allows them to visit the United States multiple times within two years.

In addition to collecting information from social media, the new request also proposes collecting telephone numbers and email addresses used by the applicant in the last 5 and 10 years, respectively, as well as other information about his or her family members.

The text cites a January Trump executive order titled “Protect the United States from foreign terrorists and other threats to national security and public safety.”

The measure is still a proposal and a 60-day period has been opened to collect public comments.

Sophia Cope of the digital rights organization Electronic Frontier Foundation criticized the plan, she told the newspaper The New York Times that could “exacerbate the damage to civil liberties.”

Immigration law firm Fragomen, in turn, suggested that there could be practical implications as applicants may have to wait longer for ESTA approval.

Experts have previously noted that travel policy changes introduced by Trump have had an impact on the US tourism industry.

Earlier this year, the World Travel and Tourism Council said the United States was the only one of 184 economies analyzed that was expected to see a decline in spending by international visitors in 2025.

The Trump administration previously announced that it would closely scrutinize social media accounts when vetting foreign nationals applying for student visas or H-1B skilled worker visas.

The State Department said it will conduct checks on the “online presence” of applicants and their dependents and that the privacy settings of all social media profiles must be “public” for this selection to be made.

An announcement on the U.S. Embassy in Mexico website said certain visa applicants must list all usernames or social media handles for all platforms they have used in the last five years.

Please note that failure to provide all social media information may result in rejection of current and future visas.

“American citizens expect their government to do everything it can to make our country safer, and that’s exactly what the Trump administration does every day,” a senior State Department official recently said of student visa policy.

The government asked its officials to identify those individuals “who defend, aid, or assist designated foreign terrorists and other threats to national security, or who commit unlawful anti-Semitic harassment or acts of violence.”

As part of the administration’s broader policy of tightening borders, Washington recently claimed that the current travel ban affecting 19 countries in Africa, the Middle East and the Americas, including Cuba and Venezuela, could soon be expanded.

This was announced following the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington DC by a man from Afghanistan.

Other actions by the Trump administration also appear to have impacted tourism, such as many Canadians boycotting travel to the United States in protest of tariffs imposed by Washington.

October marked the tenth consecutive month in which the number of Canadian travelers to the neighboring country fell.

According to the US Travel Association, Canadians historically made up about a quarter of all international visitors and spent more than $20 billion a year.

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