RVers often look for and use public WiFi hotspots at RV parks,
travel plazas and rest areas. But public hotspots are open and
unencrypted so by nature are insecure. Information you transmit via
your laptop or smartphone, may very well fall into the wrong hands.
There are ways to stay safe, however. They are:
- Set your Wi-Fi device to disallow automatic connection to opens
networks. By doing so, will always know when you’re connecting to an
open Wi-Fi hotspot. Auto-configuration is most popular on smart phones
but many laptops are configured that way by default.
- When using a public hotspot make sure you disable sharing. If
there’s a storage device or other computers on your home network, you
may have sharing enabled on your laptop.
- If you’re conducting business or sharing sensitive information,
it’s best to use a virtual private network (VPN), which creates an
encrypted, private link across a public network.
- Use a personal firewall, either the one that came with your Mac or
Windows PC, or a third-party app from a reputable security vendor.
Firewalls come with a range of configurations. At a minimum, you will
want to know when another computer is attempting to gain access to your
system.
- When paying bills and shopping online using a hotspot, it’s best if
the hotspot has WPA2 security. At the least make sure the website has a
secure connection. A site is securer if there is an ‘https’ in your
browser’s web address bar.