We like to think that we are relatively safe no matter what we do on the internet.
Some of us remain oblivious to the true dangers that are out there or we think that the dangers that are out there will not happen to us.
Like people who ride in the car without putting on their seat belts, nobody believes that they are going to get in an accident until they do.
This is the case when most people use an internet access point that is available to the public.
They either do not know the dangers that can happen while they are doing this or they simply just don’t care.
And the danger rises even more if it is a free internet access point.
Most black hat hackers will not take the time to pay for an access point to hack someone when they can find one that is free.
It is fine if you want to go to one of these free access points to casually surf the internet but if you log into anything sensitive such as your bank account, then you want to take more precautions.
SSL Connection
The first thing that you want to do when logging into a sensitive web site from a public access point is to make sure that you log in with the SSL connection.
That means in your address bar on your browser, you should see the letters “https:://”. If you do not see the “s” at the end then that means that you are logging into the site in a non secure way.
You want to make sure that your web session is encrypted and not able to be picked up by anyone.
Also another thing that you want to look for when logging into a sensitive web site is the lock at the bottom of the browser.
This lock indicates that you are having a secure web session.
If you do not see that lock then you should not continue to put your information into the site.
VPN Connection
Another way that you can make sure that you remain secure at a public access point is to use a VPN connection to surf to data sensitive web sites.
The letters VPN stand for Virtual Private Network and they will allow you to control a remote computer from wherever you are at.
And the best part about it is that the session will be encrypted depending on the software that you use.
So you will not only have encryption from the web session but you will also have the encryption from the VPN connection as well.
Securing yourself when you are on a public access point is very important when you go to a data sensitive web site.
If you take for granted that your data is safe, then you can find yourself in trouble down the line.
Article by Lee Munson
Lee's non-technical background allows him to write about internet security in a clear way that is understandable to both IT professionals and people just like you who need simple answers to your security questions.
Lee has written 2277 awesome articles for us at Security FAQs
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