Keep Your Data Safe While Traveling
With the summer travel season upon us, you may find yourself connecting to public Wi-Fi hotspots at airports, hotels, cafes, restaurants, bus stops and more. Unfortunately, public networks are honeypots for hackers who use them to infiltrate connected devices.
Do you usually connect to public Wi-Fi when you’re traveling?
Next time you’re about to do so … pause to consider whether the connection is genuine.
Cybercriminals create spoofed access points that sit between you and the real connection. Many people fall for these as they look just like the real deal.
But once you connect to a spoofed Wi-Fi network, these criminals have access to all the information you’re sending and receiving on your device. That could be passwords and login information, financial details and even customer records.
It’s estimated that around a quarter of all public access points are spoofed.
VPNs Can Help Keep Data Secure
A VPN is a service that encrypts all of a device’s internet traffic and routes it through an intermediary server in a location of the user’s choosing. A VPN grants numerous benefits to users and is particularly useful to people who have to use public Wi-FI while traveling for work or fun.
Anyone who happens to intercept internet traffic between the smartphone or laptop and the VPN server won’t be able to decipher its contents, including Wi-Fi hackers.
Dishonest individuals are continually finding clever new ways to exploit technology for their personal gain. As always, think before you connect to keep your data safe.
Source: National Cybersecurity Alliance