Relaxing at a café you love or waiting for a flight seems like the perfect opportunity to catch up on work or do some online shopping. After all, such places increasingly offer free unlimited Wi-Fi. There’s always a price to pay, and those few minutes of careless browsing may cost far more than you bargained for.

Still not convinced of public Wi-Fi’s hidden dangers? Then read on and sober up! 

A More Serious Threat than People Realize 

It should be common knowledge that someone can use public Wi-Fi to hack you and create all kinds of problems. Yet, too many people still treat it like their home or office connection.

A poll Forbes Advisor commissioned on 2,000 public Wi-Fi users reveals how almost a quarter believe it to be safe, while 43% have experienced at least one form of security compromise.

The fallout depends on your behavior and what hackers managed to steal. This can include social media and other account takeovers, identity theft & financial fraud, or malware attacks. Cyber crooks can also leverage public Wi-Fi to access unprotected files on your device or use ransomware to lock you out. 

How Is Public Wi-Fi Dangerous?

To hackers’ “credit”, they’ve figured out ways to compromise or bypass public Wi-Fi. These are the most frequent attacks and tactics they use.

Man-in-the-middle attacks happen when a bad actor connects to public Wi-Fi and uses specialized tools to put themselves between you and your online activity. Such attacks are dangerous because the perp can direct you to fake versions of legitimate websites or copy anything you type in. like account credentials or payment information.

Session hijacking is a takeover of your current browsing session. The crook steals your session cookie and gets account access identical to yours without needing to log in. They can then alter the login details & recovery email or steal linked credit card information.

Some criminals go even further and set up rogue hotspots. They’ll often use a trustworthy-looking name and forego passwords so more people fall into the trap. Then it’s just time to monitor this network before someone unknowingly spills their secrets.

Phishing uses social engineering techniques to coax users into entering their data into forms or downloading malware. It usually happens via email, but crafty crooks can skip that step and redirect you to a fake Wi-Fi login page instead.

Can You Use Public Wi-Fi and Remain Safe?

No form of protection beats skipping Wi-Fi altogether, but you can remain safe if you stick to best practices when connecting.

You’ll get the most effective and immediate boost to connection security if you protect your devices with a virtual private network. VPNs tackle public Wi-Fi’s major flaw – a lack of encryption. They cover the normally unsafe connection with a sophisticated encryption layer. The bad guys might still see that some traffic is happening, but all your encrypted data and your IP address will remain a mystery. For added security and convenience, enabling the vpn auto connect feature ensures your VPN activates automatically whenever you connect to a new Wi-Fi network, maintaining continuous protection. 

Even with a VPN installed, you should check a few things before connecting. First, confirm that the name of the Wi-Fi you’re about to connect to matches the one the restaurant, airport, etc. provides.

Password-protected networks are more annoying for hackers to breach and are slightly more trustworthy. Remember also to terminate the connection when done and disable reconnecting automatically.

Staying safe on public Wi-Fi is also a matter of usage habits. Avoid visiting sites that require you to enter login details or have access to your payment information. It’s also a good idea to wipe your browser’s cache and not use its autofill password feature. 

Conclusion 

We hope this article will make you think twice the next time the urge to connect to public Wi-Fi strikes, especially if you’re unprepared. The risks aren’t worth the convenience, so either be smart about it or wait until you can connect to a more trustworthy network.