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Q: I am accustomed to doing all my financial transactions on line. This is no problem when at home, but when I am traveling for several weeks and staying at various hotels and motels, I do not want to use any facility’s wi-fi or plug-in Internet connection with my laptop even though the management touts its systems as being secure. I do not want to use my cell phone for anything sensitive because I feel it is the most insecure system since it can be hacked, stolen or otherwise compromised. Are there any means to safely conduct transactions while on the road? Or, am I being overly cautious?

– Doug B.
Niceville, Florida

A: You are absolutely, 100%, without-a-doubt not being overly cautious, Doug.  Quite the opposite.  Your questions indicate you are aware and informed of the dangers that are lurking out there, although I don’t really agree with your implication that public Wi-Fi is more secure than a smartphone.  Public Wi-Fi is both a blessing and a curse.  It makes data and services accessible from nearly everywhere, but with the potential for data compromise.  I’ll do my best to help you protect yourself.

First of all, you are right to doubt anyone’s claim that their Wi-Fi is “secure”.  I would submit that that word is vague enough that it doesn’t even have any rational meaning in this context.  Even if there was some way to make a business’s Wi-Fi totally hack-proof, it’s a relatively simple matter to perpetrate a man-in-the-middle attack.  Here’s one way that might work: Let’s say you’re staying at Motel 7, and you want to use their free guest Wi-Fi, which management has assured you is secure.  Well, Johnny Hacker is also staying at this motel, and in his room he has set up his own Wi-Fi hotspot, and named it “MOTEL7GUEST”.  You connect to it, because it looks legitimate.  He has special proxy software that passes your data packets through, so you actually access the Internet.  Meanwhile, his system is capturing all your keystrokes, including any account numbers, user names, and passwords that you enter.

So, knowledge of the potential dangers is the first step, and you have that down.  Next would be preparation, which is to say, making sure your system is as ready as possible to be away from home.  Start by making sure your system is fully up to date, including your security tools, and don’t perform any additional updates of installations once you’ve left your home network.  Make sure you don’t have any folders or devices shared, which might make them visible and accessible to others via a public network.  Make sure your firewall is enabled.  This is the primary gatekeeper that regulates the network packets that enter your system – whether desirable or not. 

When on the road, follow the same best practices that I’ve always touted.  Use different passwords for each site you access.  Consider using a password manager to streamline this.  When you’re done on websites, log completely off, rather than just closing the browser tab. If you leave your laptop powered on when you’re not using it, turn Wi-Fi off so your system is not constantly connected.  When you leave a network, go into the network settings and choose “Forget this Network” to prevent the system from automatically re-connecting to it without your knowledge.  Finally, think carefully before entering any personal or sensitive information into a browser or web form.  If it can wait until you get back home, then wait.

If you absolutely must conduct business on the road, probably the safest way to do so is to use a Virtual Private Network, or VPN.  I talked about VPNs late last year (I.G.T.M. Issue 491, Dec 18, 2017).  By using a VPN, you’re essentially establishing a secure, encrypted data tunnel between wherever you are, and the VPN server.  Choose a legitimate, well-known VPN service such as CyberGhost, or SecurityKISS, and remember that your speed and bandwidth on these services will be limited, so only use them when you need a secured connection, such as banking, social networking, and online shopping – pretty much anything that stores credit card information.  Don’t use it for high-bandwidth purposes such as streaming media content.  As a last resort, re-consider using your cell phone.  If you keep it off the local Wi-Fi, and instead, use your phone’s 4G connection, the chances of your data being intercepted drop dramatically.

Remember that nothing is completely impenetrable to a sufficiently talented and determined hacker.  However, by putting these tips into practice, you’ll have some pretty good defenses that will make you a far less desirable target compared to the clueless non-Geek next door who is running a wide-open Wi-Fi connection.  So, good luck and happy computing-on-the-road!