Secure Yourself When Using Wi-Fi With a VPN

A VPN is the perfect tool to help you keep safe whilst using public WI-FI hotspots although as with any tool or service, it will never be able to protect you 100%, it is one of the strongest options we have in our battle to stay safe and secure on the go.

One of the key strengths of using your own Virtual Private Network is that anything you send to the internet is encrypted and that makes it all the more difficult for hackers, scammers, organisations and governments to take your details.

With more and more paces offering free WI-FI hotspots, including coffee shops, bars, restaurants, public transport, shopping centres, airports and hotels we are using public WI-FI more and more.

When we use a public hotspot, we are always leaving are selves open to scammers and hackers as by their very nature they are open to anybody.

From MITM scams to Phishing Scams and from Malware to Trojans all can be sued via public WI-FI and all are.

One of the most common methods is to set up a similar network to the one you access. For example, if you are login into a free Wi-Fi network in your favourite coffee shop you will have to connect to a network.

If that network is entitled coffeeshop_1, you will have to click on it and then connect whilst normally having to input your name and email.

Now if a scammer has set up a similar network in the area and called it something similar, such as coffeeshop-1, all they have to do is wait for someone to click on the wrong network and then when you use there’s they can see and collect the data of everything you do.

Starting off with taking your name and email, they can follow you around the web so if you log in to your social media, they have access to your accounts, if you log in to your bank, they have your bank account details. Then of course if you use your credit or debit account, they have your details etc etc.

Basically they can quickly take any personnel and important information that we give away over public Wi-Fi networks every day.

This is where a VPN comes into its own as when you access a public network using your Virtual Private Network, it adds a barrier between yourself and anybody trying to see what you are doing.

Even if you are unfortunate enough to access the network of a scammer, all of the information you input is encrypted and becomes all but worthless to the majority of scammers out there.