Why Is it Important to Use a VPN When Accessing Public Wi-Fi?

Public Wi-Fi and hotspots can be a great convenience. Whether you’re on a phone, tablet, or laptop, public Wi-Fi in airports, coffee shops, hotels, and elsewhere are awesome for staying connected, even when you’re away from the office or home. But what many people don’t realize is that public Wi-Fi networks represent a real security and privacy threat, providing an easy avenue of access for bad actors, hackers, and others with malicious intent to access your device, its contents, and/or launch convincing phishing and hack attempts.

Fortunately, you can still use public Wi-Fi networks, but securely, with a quality VPN service. There are many services to choose from, each offering different terms, pricing, and so forth. We recommend checking out the reviews of top VPN services, such as https://bestvpn24.com/cyberghost-vpn-review/, before you commit to a particular provider.

What Do VPN Services Offer?

VPN service providers offer clients and apps for their service for devices on most common operating systems. With one of these clients or apps installed, and a subscription account to the service, users gain a great deal of security, privacy, and anonymity when online – regardless of where they connect. Private networks, at home or the office, as well as public networks are all rendered more secure. This is possible because the traffic from your device routes to the VPN server through an encrypted tunnel – looking like gibberish to the outside world. The VPN server decrypts it, appends its own IP address to it (so your real IP is protected), and passes the traffic on to its ultimate destination. Then the process runs in reverse to get a response back to your device or system.

This means your traffic is secure, your real IP address protected, and your network presence masked. It also offers other non-security related features, such as the ability to get around censorship or geographically restricted content, by connecting to VPN servers in other countries. Most high-end VPN service providers also include several other security measures in their clients and apps, such as adware and malware prevention, software firewalls, and more, which all make your online experience more private, secure, and anonymous – even on public Wi-Fi.

What Are the Risks of Using Public Wi-Fi?

Public Wi-Fi inherently presents several risks to you and your data. For a start, public, unsecured Wi-Fi allows anyone to join the network – that’s what it does by definition. But this means that anyone, with any intention, can be connected to the network. Accessing your device, information, and even content is far easier when on the same network than, say, across the Internet. Without getting too technical or going into hacking methodologies, suffice it to say that public Wi-Fi presents a golden opportunity for hackers and those with ill intent to make targeted attacks on others on the network, though activities like snooping, sniffing, and so forth.

At the same time, hackers or bad actors can perform what’s called a man-in-the-middle attack, where they essentially intercept your traffic. Assuming it’s unencrypted (usually the case), they can read and process this traffic, gaining information about you, compromising your privacy, and even gaining passwords and similar. This is usually the prelude to a phishing or other attempt to dig even deeper into your system or device, with the ultimate goal being to gain control of your device, or your information, to make a profit or wreak havoc somewhere else.

Further, when computers or other Internet devices are sharing the same network, it’s far easier to insert malicious code, malware, and other unwanted programs into your device surreptitiously. These can remain dormant for quite a long time, and then be used later on to steal your keystrokes, passwords, financial information, and so on.

One last point that we haven’t addressed yet is the potential for rogue network administrators of public Wi-Fi networks to conduct attacks. The owner of the public hotspot or network may have ulterior motives – often, in fact, fake hotspots are created as a great way to get people connected to a network, to allow a bad actor to try to take advantage of the situation and get at their computers and data. This is probably unlikely to be the case when you’re visiting an airport, hotel, or your favorite coffee shop, but it’s not impossible. Without a VPN service or similar measures, whoever controls the network has a great deal of access to your device and its information.

How Do VPNs Make Public Wi-Fi More Safe and Secure?

As you can see, there are a great number of risks posed by using public Wi-Fi networks and hotspots. Fortunately, VPNs can reduce or eliminate most of those risks. While they are by no means a cure-all, and other security measures should still be taken, they can help make the use of public Wi-Fi networks more safe and secure. This is accomplished in the following ways:

• Encrypted tunneling between the user and the VPN server means man-in-the-middle attacks are thwarted.
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• The tunneling, and requisite blocking of all non-tunneled connection attempts, means your system is effectively hidden on the network – it cannot be accessed via normal protocols that would be used.
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• Your IP address is hidden on outbound traffic, first with the encryption, then with the VPN server IP that masks your true IP once traffic gets to the server. This means both destination servers can’t trace back to your real location or identity, and you are further obscured and protected from malware and malicious attacks that happen after traffic leaves your system.
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• VPNs also help protect you against attacks that may be initiated by the public Wi-Fi network administrator, in much the same way as the points mentioned above.
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• Most of the better VPN clients and apps come with additional security measures that add layers of protection for all connections, and particularly for unsecured, public Wi-Fi networks. They may use multiple techniques, variable connection protocols, and built-in anti-malware, anti-spyware, and other similar features to ensure you can safely and securely use a public Wi-Fi network.