Today, almost all cafes, shops, airports, hotels and other public areas provide public WiFi for their customers and visitors. Although a password is required to log in, this does not necessarily mean that the WiFi is secure. If you use public WiFi without any protection, you may be at the risk of personal information leakage or even property damage.

All WiFi networks can be roughly divided into two categories: open networks and encrypted networks. For open networks, anyone can log in without any authentication. Encrypted networks are those that require identity authentication. Public WiFi security is concerned, even an encrypted WiFi is not completely secure because there are many other common methods hackers can use to crack it, including man-in-the-middle attacks, malware, etc.

If you can’t avoid using a public WiFi network, you’re suggested to make sure you’re well protected while you’re using it. Here are a few tips for using public WiFi:

1. Don’t turn on the WiFi automatic connection on your mobile phone or computer. Otherwise, it is easy to be found by some phishing WiFi or connected to the network designed by hackers, resulting in the leakage of personal information or account information.

2. Try to choose public WiFi provided by the government, restaurants or shopping malls. When you choose these networks, just ask the staff for the password. Although such a network is not 100% secure, it is much more secure than some unidentified WiFi that does not require a password.

3. Don’t enter some important accounts when you use public WiFi, such as online banking, stocks, funds, Alipay, etc. Using your own mobile network to log into these accounts is far safer than using public WiFi.

4. Don’t click on any links randomly when you use public WiFi. If online advertisements or other abnormal pages pop up suddenly, don’t click, then immediately close the WiFi network. If you happen to log into your important accounts, it is better to change the password in time to ensure security!

5. Turn on your firewall to prevent hackers from unauthorized external access to your system. A firewall acts as a shield to protect your device from data-based malware threats. It can actively monitor packets from the network and check if they are safe. So if you want to use public WiFi, remember to use your firewall.

While it’s almost impossible not to use public WiFi, there are still things we can do to keep our information safe. Hope this article can help you.