It’s no longer difficult to find Wi-Fi when you leave the house. Hotels, restaurants, bars, transport hubs, sports stadiums, stores, city parks, and many other places offer internet connectivity nowadays, and access is often free if you’re willing to give up an email address.
That makes staying connected much easier, whether you’re working away from the office, or trying to keep up with your favorite TV show on vacation. But the increasing ubiquity and convenience of public Wi-Fi doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to make more of it—and to keep yourself better protected when you get online.
These networks are not the same as your home or office Wi-Fi, and that means there are different points to consider. Here’s how to stay connected to public Wi-Fi the expert way.
1. Improve Speeds
You’re somewhat limited when it comes to improving speeds on public Wi-Fi as you don’t actually control the network, but there are some ways to maximize performance. Keep your apps and browser tabs down to a minimum, for example, and maybe switch off those cloud storage syncs temporarily.
Experimenting with different positions can help secure you a faster connection. Even if you’re in a hotel lobby or a coffee shop, it makes more difference than you might think. The main router should be somewhere visible, so look for it. If there are multiple public Wi-Fi networks in your location, try switching to one lower down the list that fewer people may have connected to.
This isn’t always possible, but hook your laptop up to a wired Ethernet connection wherever you can, as you’ll see better speeds and less interference from other people. You can sometimes find wired connections in hotel rooms and coworking spaces, and if you frequent those places, it might be worth getting an adapter just for this purpose.
2. Use a VPN
This is a big one. VPN (virtual private network) apps are often sold as ways of spoofing your location and stopping other parties from tracking your online browsing, but they also work really well for staying safe on public Wi-Fi. Essentially, they make it much more difficult for someone else on the same Wi-Fi network to see what you’re doing.
With a VPN installed, the data coming to and going from your devices is routed through an encrypted tunnel that other people can’t get access to—so it’s well worth keeping one running while you’re on public Wi-Fi. We’ve previously written about using a VPN when traveling, and we keep a frequently updated list of the best VPNs services.
3. Hide Your Email
As we’ve mentioned, you’ll usually be asked for an email address if you want to connect to a public Wi-Fi network—an email address which may then be bombarded with special offers and news updates until the end of time. With that in mind it’s a good idea to use temporary, disposable email addresses for these situations.
Lots of email providers let you create temporary addresses, including Apple, Yahoo, and Proton Mail. You can do it in Gmail too, up to a point: If your email is [email protected], you can have multiple addresses with the structure [email protected] that will reach your primary inbox.
That doesn’t protect you in quite the same way that a temporary email address does, but you can set up filters for messages coming into [email protected] and have these messages automatically archived or deleted so you don’t have to see them.
4. Limit Your Connectivity
Most of the time you’re going to be fine on a public Wi-Fi network—especially with a VPN—but from a security and privacy perspective you want to make sure you’re only connected for as long as necessary. Manually disconnect from the Wi-Fi when you’re done, and make sure all your devices are not automatically reconnecting without your knowledge.
On Windows, you can manage this via Settings > Network & internet > WiFi > Manage known networks. On macOS, head to System Settings > Wi-Fi > Advanced. If you’ve never visited these screens before, you’ll come across all the networks your laptop has ever connected to, and you can delete from the list any networks you don’t want your computer to automatically join.
5. Don’t Connect at All
This isn’t really a tip for connecting to public Wi-Fi, but it’s worth considering: Just because you can find one or more public Wi-Fi networks wherever you go doesn’t mean you should make use of them.
The other obvious option is running a hot spot from your phone, which you can do via Settings > Network and Internet > Hotspot and tethering on Android or Settings > Personal Hotspot on an iPhone.
This is a much more secure and private way of keeping laptops and other devices online while you’re on the move, but there are downsides: It’ll use up your cellular data allowance, and it’ll drain your phone’s battery more quickly.
6. Stick to the Basics
It’s worth considering what you’re using public Wi-Fi for, as well as everything else we’ve mentioned. It’s probably best to leave your online shopping and banking to networks that are more private and isolated, for example, if you can—with activities like social media checking and general browsing, it’s less of an issue if data leaks out.
You might also find heavy-duty streaming is difficult on public Wi-Fi. There’s not much you can do about that, other than put in preparations ahead of time: Most video and audio streaming apps let you cache content offline to watch and listen to without an internet connection, though it’s sometimes a paid extra.
7. Share Wi-Fi Around
If it was a real pain to get your laptop connected to a public Wi-Fi network, maybe you don’t want to go through the whole process again for a phone, a tablet, or for devices belonging to friends or family members.
Once you’ve got a Windows or macOS laptop connected to Wi-Fi, you can actually use it as a hot spot for other devices to connect to. On Windows, go to Settings > Network & internet > Mobile hotspot, and on macOS head to System Settings > General > Sharing > Internet Sharing.
There’s a caveat with Macs: You can share a wired Ethernet connection as a Wi-Fi hot spot, or share a Wi-Fi connection via an iPhone connected via USB, but you can’t do wireless-to-wireless (that is, connect to a Wi-Fi network and then also share that network via Wi-Fi, as you can with Windows).
The post 7 Useful Tips for Anyone Connecting to Public Wi-Fi appeared first on Wired.
