Several years ago, a friend and his wife were shopping on a high street. She was at a cashpoint across the street with his bank card and had forgotten his PIN number. Without a pause, he shouted the number to her from amongst a crowd of bystanders. I agree that my friend is a little unusual. However, his behaviour is quite similar to how many of us naively use our mobile computers on public wireless networks found in coffee shops, airports and elsewhere. With summer travel approaching and more of us using mobile devices every day, it is time to put on some digital protection before you go swimming with wifi sharks.
There are three main issues when using coffee shop-style open networks. These are snooping on your communication, infection from another machine and, most challenging, hotspots created to lure you into a digital trap.
First is snooping by other computers on the network. On an open network other computers can read the insecure data sent to and from your computer. Since most websites still do not secure the whole of their communication with you, much of your stream of data is open for others to read and modify. This can be used by fraudsters in a variety of creative ways including impersonating you to take over your account at these websites.
The solution for snooping is to use a virtual private network (VPN) on public networks. This is a service you setup on your computer that provides you with a secure tunnel straight onto the internet and free from local interference. All the information transmitted along this tunnel is safe from snooping at the coffee shop or airport. If you are concerned that your broadband provider is monitoring your browsing, you may like to know that a VPN prevents them knowing what you do online. For a discussion of other VPN benefits together with suggestions for VPN suppliers do visit my website.
The second issue is that public networks rarely prevent traffic flowing between users. This means that an infected machine may attempt pass on this infection to your computer through access to your computer’s resources. You can prevent this by maintaining your computer’s basic security in the form of anti-virus and firewall packages together with the latest software updates.
Finally we come to malicious wifi providers whose hotspots are designed as a trap. These are wifi hot-spots that attack your computer such as invisibly redirecting you to fake websites in order to collect your login details or trying to plant malware on your computer. With wifi protocols still leaving you unable to confirm the identity and safety of open networks, there is no simple answer to this which begs the question of why we use open networks at all.
When travelling with your mobile device your best defence is preparation combined with common sense. I recommend to turn off automatic connection to wireless networks and clear your wifi network connection history so that this is not used against you. Then watch out for signs that you are being targeted such as firewall warnings combined with VPN connections that keep failing. If in doubt, you may prefer walking away rather than potentially mopping up after digital havoc.
As for internet banking, save it until you get to a secure environment. Did everyone catch my PIN number?