Most of us travel to get away from it all. Vacation offers us time to unplug from the nonstop emails and notifications, and time to relax and be less distracted by everything that constantly demands our time. Being able to leave your work phone at home for a few days can offer us mental peace that’s worth its weight in gold. But sometimes, even on vacation, you still need to get online.
Depending on where you’re traveling, most places have wifi now. At the airport or the hotel, in restaurants and some tourist attractions, wifi is becoming more and more readily available. There are still some places where you can’t get a good signal (unless your sherpa packs a router on his back), but for now, we’ll assume you’re someplace that prioritizes wifi almost as much as two-ply toilet paper. Hopefully you know by now that you shouldn’t just jump onto whatever hotspot you find.
For those of you who don’t know that it’s unsafe to get on any random wifi connection, here’s why: It’s fairly simple for someone to set up a wifi hotspot. I can do it with just my phone, in fact. I can call my hotspot ‘Starbucks’, make it free, and sit in the Starbucks lounge. People inadvertently connect to my phone instead of the one provided by the store, and, viola! All of their internet data is going through my phone. If I were using a laptop, I could save all of that information to my computer. I’d know what you were doing, what websites you were visiting, and even if you went to your bank account or other site that uses encryption. That’s the easy part. After that, it’s possible for me to start decrypting the HTTPS traffic to actually get your login information for your email, Facebook, or bank account. The longer you’re online using a single encrypted session, the easier it is for me to crack. So that neat little “HTTPS” that you see in your browser, the one that you rely on to guarantee your safety and security, doesn’t really guarantee it at all. It will stop all but the most determined hackers, but that’s about it.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that there are a few things you can do to help ensure your safety, or at the very least, reduce your risk of being hacked. First of all, don’t trust whatever open wifi connection you can find. Suppose I go to a bar that doesn’t offer wifi and I set up a hotspot with the name of the bar? Most people would assume that it’s free wifi offered by the establishment and, just like that, I’ve got victims lined up. Second, don’t access your bank accounts or anything else sensitive while on an unsecured wifi network. Do it at home, not out in public unless absolutely necessary.
Probably the most valuable thing you can do is to use a VPN. A Virtual Private Network will allow you to encrypt your traffic in addition to using HTTPS. If you connect to a VPN before going to any website or bank account, the wifi router can’t see where you’re going. All of the traffic from your phone (or tablet or laptop) will appear garbled and it will all look like it’s going to the same destination. That makes it infinitely harder to figure out what you’re doing or how to crack the encryption. If I set up a fake hotspot and I have 2 people on my wifi network, one using a VPN and one not, guess who’s data I’m going after? The one without a VPN.
There are a lot of VPN providers out there, some free, some at a low cost. I encourage you to do your own research to find the one that’s right for you. I use ProXPN, which has an app for Windows and for my Android phone, and it appears that they have an iPhone version as well. It’s easy to set up and fairly inexpensive. When I’m someplace outside of my home and I need to check my bank balance or credit card statement, I launch the VPN app, connect to the VPN (which is as simple as clicking a button), and then I can browse the web as much as I want, knowing that my connection is secure. On my last trip, Cristina needed to check her AmEx account. Rather than use her phone which could have exposed her data to hackers, I connected my phone to the VPN and she checked her information on my phone. It was quick and easy, and most importantly, it was safe.
Wifi is a valuable technology in our day-to-day life as well as while we’re traveling. Being able to check your hotel status, upgrade your flights, updating Facebook, or even just emailing family and friends to let them know you’re safe can all make your travel experience more relaxing and enjoyable. Adding a VPN takes some of the risk out of connecting to unknown hotspots, which makes it one less thing for you to worry about while you’re on vacation.
