Which foreign country? Norms and laws will vary from country to country. As an example, when cycling across Russia there was a lot of public land where essentially anyone can camp - and I saw a number of locals also camping. I didn't put a huge amount of effort into going "stealth", but usually would get at least half a dozen kilometers away from nearest village and otherwise pull a little ways off the road. That was more to avoid curious locals than to evade anything.

One night while I was camped in the West Siberian oil region, I had a jeep pull up and when I poked my head out saw two armed guards checking me out. Some quick Russian to explain I was a bicycle tourist and they asked if I was leaving next morning and all was good. On a different occasion, close to Chita, I had violated my maxim of being far away from local villages and had a pair that clearly had too much to drink come over to check things out. Initially their curiosity questions were fine, but the ones that followed "do you have money?" put me on edge so I more abruptly ended that conversation with one or two tense moments.

However, other than a few isolated cases, I was otherwise left alone despite folks probably being able to see my bright orange tent from the road. Other encounters from locals were much more positive than negative.