You’ve heard that you shouldn’t open PayPal, your bank account and possibly even your email while using public WiFi. But what are the actual risks?
Well, your home WiFi is (hopefully) encrypted; the WiFi at the coffee shop isn’t. This means you’re at risk of people monitoring your online activity, or worse – unless you know how to protect yourself. Here are a few dangers, and how to avoid them.
Unencrypted Browsing Is Public
WiFi uses radio waves, and radio waves are anything but direct. They broadcast, and this means that anyone within range can see everything you’re doing online, if they have the right software.
This means that, without protection, anyone who wants to can see:
- Every site you visit
- Every bit of text you send out
- Your login information for various sites
The danger here is clear, so naturally you’re going to want protection. At home, you can encrypt your WiFi network – this prevents snooping by making all of your traffic unreadable with a key. Public WiFi, however, usually isn’t encrypted – you can tell this is the case when you don’t need to type a password in order to connect.
Does this mean you’re defenceless? No.
Your first line of defence is OpenSSL, a kind of encryption offered by many websites: Google, Facebook and most banks, to name a few. This technology encrypts the traffic between you and another site, meaning no one will be able to snoop on that activity. You’ll know OpenSSL is on when you see “HTTPS” in your browser’s address bar, like this: