This post was published 5 years 2 months 24 days ago. Therefore, it may well be out of date. Do not reply on the contents of this post being accurate. If you use public hotspots (wired or wireless) without encrypting your network traffic (web, email, etc.) you run the risk of having your privacy and security compromised.
For example, checking your email using your favourite email client can give away your email username and password to a hacker running packet sniffer software thus allowing full and unrestricted access to your webmail account.
There are several ways you can protect yourself against this. One such way is to utilise a VPN. If you’re not comfortable with setting up your own VPN then from around £5 per month HotSpotVPN is a very simple alternative. Best of all it’s Windows, Mac and Linux compatible.
After subscribing to HotSpotVPN, and downloading the application, with one click you can establish a VPN tunnel that encrypts all your network traffic. This tunnel exists between your machine and HotSpotVPN’s servers therefore getting you out of the potential danger zone you’re in (for example, the hotel or coffee shop’s wi-fi you happen to be using at any given time).
There is a slight reduction in performance but, IMO, this is only really noticeable on large image/video intensive sites and/or data transfers.
£5 per month and a negligible overhead in network performance are small prices to pay to prevent your data being captured. Public Internet access is very convenient but this convenience shouldn’t be at the expense of your security, privacy and/or identity.
