How "much" security protection from public WIFI networks

rolion

Hi all,

A quick question,please... what kind of expectations should i have as security protection from a public WIFI nework,be a coffee shop or a hotel location ?
My device can be a laptop or a mobile device.

Thanks in advance.

ED E

Treat it like the public internet.

gctest50

Worse than none - you might have someone actively snooping

Might be a false hotspot

irishgeo

rolion wrote: »

Hi all,

A quick question,please... what kind of expectations should i have as security protection from a public WIFI nework,be a coffee shop or a hotel location ?
My device can be a laptop or a mobile device.

Thanks in advance.

A VPN is your only secure way to use one of these.

rolion

Thanks.
You're right about snooping and false active spot.
VPN may not work for all the proceses.

If i setup the network to "public network" type for public internet ... will do / be enough you think ?

Thanks

ED E

All that does is stop SMB(file sharing) and printer sharing. A tiny bit better but essentially nothing.

HTTPs traffic, especially that with PFS, will be still hardened but any plaintext transfers are fully open to abuse.

CastielJ

rolion wrote: »

Thanks.
You're right about snooping and false active spot.
VPN may not work for all the proceses.

If i setup the network to "public network" type for public internet ... will do / be enough you think ?

Thanks

I stopped using VPN long time ago. Free vpn is unreliable and does not guarantee the secure connection. I use fineproxy server now . A proxy server can easily hide password before passing it into the site. And I always turn it on while using public wifi.

ED E

CastielJ wrote: »

I stopped using VPN long time ago. Free vpn is unreliable and does not guarantee the security connection. I use now fineproxy server. A proxy server can easily hide password before passing it into the site. And I always turn it on while using public wifi.

You're completely missing the point. Thats lower security, not higher.

Fake News

You can always download proxifier which is free. There are thousands of free proxies you can use.

Mr. G

Fake News wrote: »

You can always download proxifier which is free. There are thousands of free proxies you can use.

But this is as bad as a VPN, actually worse than using public WiFi as it can do man in the middle attacks and reissue their own cert as it's a frame in the window.

You don't get anything for free in this world.

Your own VPN, or a trustworthy VPN service is better than nothing. I know Avast used do some VPN service

ED E

Avast does HTTPs interception by default but its unreliable and causes issues. I always steer clear of that pile of dung.