The theme for this week is: protecting yourself and your wallet online. Hackers are becoming more sophisticated, so it’s hard to keep up, and unfortunately, most of us are pretty lax in our cybersecurity protection practices. So this week, I’m sharing with you 5 quick wins to take your cybersecurity protection to the next level.

Today we’re talking about one of the greatest sins I see, which is poor security in public places. I go to a coffee shop and I see someone working and answering emails, where anyone walking by can see their screen and what they’re doing.

I see people shopping online, and I sure hope those people whipping out their credit cards and logging into data sensitive websites have encrypted their public wi-fi surfing. The problem with public wi-fi is 2-fold:

1. You might inadvertently log in to a hackers private network who is posing as the coffee shop. So always get the exact name of the public wi-fi network, so can protect yourself on that front.
2. Other people have the ability to see what you’re doing on a public wi-fi network. There are ways you can browse safe and securely on public wi-fi, but it’s best to only do activities on public wi-fi that you wouldn’t mind others seeing, and avoid file sharing or activities involving sensitive private information, as a general rule.

So how can you protect yourself on public wi-fi? One way is by turning your phone into a hotspot, which allows you to circumvent the public wifi. Or, you can use a VPN, which stands for virtual private network. This is a software tool that you can install on your computer that encrypts your data on public wi-fi.

Turning your phone into a hotspot or setting up a VPN are very simple to do, but a in-depth explanation is beyond the scope of these tips. Personally, I’ve used both and I use these methods any time I log in to a public wifi network. For more information, ask your most tech savvy friend for help or turn to a google search.

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening.

My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip.

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