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Home » Blog » 6 reasons why you shouldn’t use a public WiFi ever again without a VPN service

6 reasons why you shouldn’t use a public WiFi ever again without a VPN service

Public wifi, it seems so practical, you are almost anywhere online. In the past public wifi used to be something special, nowadays you can almost connection everywhere to the internet. On the airport, in the hotel, café or restaurant, in the train, at school or even on the streets. Super easy right? But is it clever to use a public wifi unprotected? Wifi hotspots are the places where other people can read your data. Is it even safe to use the internet without VPN? In this article we will give you a few important reasons on why you should use a public wifi without a VPN service.

The danger of unsecured networks and websites

browser

Do you want to be sure that your personal data is safe on the internet? Then is encryption the magic word. It makes sure that the data that you sent is unrecognisable. It is transformed in a code and this prevents people from doing something with it. A coded website is recognisable when the url begins with https inseat of http. In your browser you see a lock that states if your website is safe or not. However, when you are surfing, you visit a secured website just as easily as a not secured website. When you send data to websites that aren’t encrypted, you are at risk.

WiFi

When you use your wifi at home, if everything is correct, it is setup in the way that you need a password. Your network is secured with a WPA key. Now the point is that lots of public hotspots don’t have these. When you connect with such a wifi network you can almost be certainly sure that the connection is unsafe terrain. To safely surf the internet on a public network you need to use a VPN service like GOOSE VPN. Then you surf the web anonymously and nobody is able to watch you.

Password of the router is available

Of course it’s nice that all those public occasions offer free wifi. However, you could become a victim of the unknowing of the owner of this kind of network. For example, let’s take uncle Piet from café De Klaas who doesn’t know anything about wifi. He has no idea that his username and password of his router can be seen by anybody. This makes it very easy for an evil minded person to get acces to all the wifi users in the café. Wihout VPN you can forget it. So while you are enjoying a beer and are logging in to Facebook, you notice when your glass is empty that your account was hacked.

Phone tapping

Nelly from hair saloon Hairdoo gives her customers access to the wifi network. Because most customers find a password difficult to use, she made the connection public. You have to keep the customers happy, that’s what she is thinking. What Nelly doesn’t know is that there is a special snooping software circulating that can make the eavesdropping of wifi signals quite easy for cyber criminals.
They can keep track of everything that you are doing on the internet. Whole websites that you visit and everything you have written down there can be traced. Just when you are cutting a coupe soleil, all kinds of personal data is filled in. You wished you had made use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN). That makes sure that your data is mixed up and therefore is made invisible to third parties.
The attack of the ‘man in the middle’
It could be the title of a movie about cybercriminality. In English these intercepted attacks which happens without them knowing in which information between two communicating parties is being shared, are called Man in the Middle (MitM) attacks. Nowadays there are lots of free tools on the internet to be found that make the hacking of public networks very easy. So easy that, a 7 year old girl was able to steal data within 11 minutes from different computers that were connected to the same wifi network.

Your computer could be infected by malware

Malware makes use of vulnerable elements in for example software. It can unknowingly sneak into your computer or smartphone. Malware can make your computer slower, but it can also get access to your personal data.

False networks

Just when you connection to a legitimate wifi network from the hotel you are staying, the name seems to be different and you are connected to the unsafe version. Everyone can set up a wifi network and that makes it very easy to duplicate a network almost perfectly. Instead of for example adamschotel you made connection with adamhotel. You don’t notice the difference but at the same time the hacker can lure you into a trap. While you are logging in on your online bank account, criminals are watching and they empty your bank account.
‘Evil twins’ is similar. It looks just like a real network, but it is a clone of it. With all the following results. Using a public wifi makes you extra vulnerable. Be on your guard!

Safe on the internet with VPN

The internet is full of dangers that you have just read about. And to make the list of never-ending treats no longer we spent no time at ad hocs, worms and spoofing. So can you still get on the internet safely? On that question you have to answer no more and more often. Especially when you use a public wifi. Therefore it is advised to install a VPN on your computer and on you smartphone. If you want to use a Dutch VPN provider then is GOOSE VPN a excellent choice. The service is cheap, user-friendly and simple.

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