Safe surfing in wifi hotspots

Firstly, don't expect your firewall to help you with the problem that Watchdog has exposed; wifi hotspots are'not secure'. A firewall can stop your computer from succumbing to malicious software and viruses but they won't protect the information sent and received from your computer from a hacker's prying eyes. If you want to solve that problem, a VPN or Virtual Private Network is the best way to secure your computer when using a wireless hot-spot.

How does a VPN work?

A VPN works by connecting you to the internet, through, what is best described as a secured tunnel. The information you look at is encrypted and sent along the tunnel to you, the user. When you receive it your computer decrypts the information for you to read. Information sent in this way, between the user and a public wi-fi system, cannot be read by a would-be hacker.

However, experts warn that VPNs themselves can be problematic. When using a VPN all of your data is handled by the provider of that VPN. They can view this information so it's up to you to decide whether you trust them or not.

VPNs are readily available and there are many choices on offer when you type the letters into an internet search engine. Bear in mind though, that you'll need to remember to switch your VPN on before you start to surf sensitive webpages or you won't be protected. Your VPN provider may place a 'cap' on the amount of data you use (your bandwidth) so it might make sense to turn the VPN off if you are looking at non-sensitive content such as YouTube videos as this will quickly use up your bandwidth.

Other options...

But what happens if, like most people, you don't know your VPNs from your VPLs? There are a couple of other options. The simplest and safest one is to never check your email over a public wiifi spot. If you do need to catch-up on your emails you should use an email account that allows you to sign in using an 'https' address rather than a 'http' one. If you check any internet address in the URL bar you'll see that almost all start with 'http'. So, look out for 'https' at the beginning of the address as it means that all the pages you view will be encrypted, making them far more difficult to hack.

If your email account offers this you'll most likely find it in the 'options' section once you've logged in. But again, our expert warns that even if your email account allows you to log in under 'https' some accounts only do this for the log in page – everything after that is back in 'http' mode and so more vulnerable to attack.

A final option is to use a 'mobile broadband dongle' which allows you to connect to the internet over a more secure 3G connection, which is usually provided by your mobile phone operator. Dongles are safe from the type of email invasion demonstrated on Watchdog and you can often get one added to your mobile phone package although you're likely to end up paying more.