Firstly, I am not a professional computer tech. nor I.T. trained. I manage to keep reasonably informed (I hope) on computer security as a layperson & traveler (I take a laptop along with me). You may wish to follow along with my thoughts on info. I search out & share about computer security when traveling, being my own personal conclusions & points of view. Your own thinking & conclusions are also necessary. Hopefully I can save you some time by sending some of your thoughts in helpful directions & towards useful questions.

 

How can we keep our email & social media account(s) (our personal information) as secure as possible while traveling (using public WiFi at times?). Whenever I might feel impatient about the extra time it can take to learn & implement travel internet security steps, I remind myself:  am not really interested to have my $$, personal information, and/or personal identity stolen. I suggest to pack extra patience when taking a laptop along on a trip, because it’s most likely that the computer setups & processes will take up more time than they do when staying at home.

 

One is sometimes weighing whether to use a public WiFi system (e.g. in an airport, while waiting hours for the next flight), & how to keep personal information more secure if doing so. I say “more secure” because I don’t know that any computer system can be considered 100% secure, 100% of the time, but I do read that we can certainly improve (or greatly improve) the security.

 

It seems that two of the first things to address are:

• using a good travel VPN on the computer; &

• having a good travel virus protection program in place on the computer/laptop.