How to Find Safe Public WiFi While Traveling

For modern travellers, reliable internet access has become essential for so many reasons, including confirming hotel bookings, managing schedules and trip itineraries, communicating with clients, or staying connected with your loved ones. The most common and popular option to stay connected to the internet while travelling is accessing public WiFi networks. Accessing the internet through a public WiFi network is free, convenient, and simple.

However, public WiFi networks come with their fair share of risks and can expose your personal data, financial information, and business accounts if you are not cautious enough. So it is important that you know how to identify safe public WiFi while travelling so that you avoid facing any repercussions later on. Let us discuss a few strategies that you can use to find safe public WiFi while travelling.

Use WiFi From Trusted Locations Only

The safest public WiFi networks are usually the ones that come from reputable institutions and public places. Airports, well-known hotels, libraries, major café chains, and universities invest a lot of money in encrypting their networks and network monitors to protect users. Instead of connecting to random networks in public parks, bus stops, or tourist streets, which are often irregular and easy targets for hackers, you should prioritise Wi-Fi networks from trusted locations.

The public WiFi networks at trusted locations are not perfectly secure, but they are significantly safer than unknown hotspots in crowded public places.

Always Verify the Network Name

One of the most common travel scams these days is fake WiFi networks. Hackers create networks with names similar to real ones to trick users into connecting to these malicious networks and exposing their data. Before connecting to a WiFi network at any public place, you should ask the staff for the exact WiFi name and password. Ensure to check spelling carefully and avoid networks with similar names.

In case there are multiple options with the same or similar names, choose only the confirmed one from the list. This is a simple habit, yet it can prevent many security problems.

Avoid Completely Open Networks

While travelling, you should avoid connecting to completely open networks because these networks without passwords are extremely risky, as they have no encryption, and anyone can monitor data traffic. Even basic hacking tools can be employed on these networks to capture the data being shared across the network, including emails, passwords, and browsing activity.

Choose networks that use login pages, require passwords, and provide one-time passwords that you enter on the IP address page i.e. http://192.168.1.1/ to access the internet. These are not foolproof, but they reduce unauthorized access significantly and can help to preserve your privacy and security.

Use a VPN to Secure Connections


A Virtual Private Network or VPN, encrypts your internet traffic so that anyone on the network cannot read or intercept your data. When you use a properly configured and quality VPN, not even your ISP can read your data. This is one of the most effective methods of protection when using public Wi-Fi.

When you cannot find a safe public Wi-Fi network, you can use a VPN to secure and encrypt your connection. This can make the entire connection secure and protect your data. Plus, whenever you are performing a sensitive task on public Wi-Fi, such as checking banking apps, managing business orders, accessing the settings of your home Wi-Fi remotely, accessing research accounts, or updating client content, you should activate a VPN to preserve your privacy.

Turn Off Automatic WiFi Connections

Many devices automatically connect to saved networks and open Wi-Fi networks. Bad actors exploit this by creating fake hotspots with similar names or the same names, like “Airport Wi-Fi.” Before you travel anywhere, you should go to Wi-Fi settings and turn off the auto-connect feature. Plus, you should delete old saved networks that you no longer use and connect manually to a new network each time to ensure that you only join safe networks and avoid accidental connections.

Use personal hotspot or mobile hotspot devices

Almost all Android and iPhones offers mobile tethering services that allows you to share your mobile data to your laptop or tablet via Wi-Fi connectivity. Simply go to your mobile hotspot settings to turn on the hotspot sharing option and connect your device. Alternately, you can also carry a portable hotspot device that is specifically designed to share mobile data when you don’t want to use your personal mobile phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot. But make sure you change the default Wi-Fi password by going to your device settings page which is often 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 and use a strong password of at-least 8 characters containing alphabets, numbers, and mixed cases.