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Free public Wi-Fi is incredibly useful when you are on the road is you can check in with family and friends and even download maps.
You do have to be careful though when you are connecting to an unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot as your data can be intercepted.
In this how to, I am gonna show you how to minimize the risk.
Whether you are using a laptop, smartphone or a tablet.
Some general pointers to be aware of first up, avoid doing any credit card or personal information transactions when you are on public WiFi.
You also should check for secure connections either by looks for https.
Or checking for a lock in the corner of your browser screen.
Keep your browser and your operating system up to date, but make sure you do this when your not on public WiFi.
Do this on a secure connection like at home, or at work.
When scanning for WiFi, you need to make sure that you're connecting to a legitimate public WiFi network.
Don't just connect to the first open one that's available.
Check with the cafe or the hotel or the airport that your at because it's really easy for someone who wants to intercept your data to set up a fake network just called free wi-fi and it looks pretty tempting.
If you decide to connect to that open network, turn off file sharing on your pc or mac.
On windows it's really simple, go control panel and then find the advanced settings within the network connection option, and then turn off file sharing under public network.
On MAC the process is really similar.
Open System Preferences, then find the Sharing icon and then un-tick File Sharing.
One of the best ways to stay safe on a public connection is to use a VPN.
This will encrypt the traffic between your device and the server.
There are plenty of VPN options out there.
If you want a free version, then Security Kits offers you 300 megabytes of data per day.
Which is more than enough for casual web browsing tasks.
Finally when you're all done mooching that sweet, sweet public wi-fi, make sure to log off all your open services and then forget the network.
In Android, you can do this by going into your wi-fi connections, finding the name of the network, long pressing and then selecting forget network.
In iOS, head to settings, find the network name again, select it and then forget the network.
A big thanks to Auto Trading Company in Sydney for letting us use their cafe and wi-fi.
For more tips on staying safe on public wi-fi, make sure to check out the full tutorial over at CNet.
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