Public WiFi and Email Security | Is It Ever Safe?

Back in the days of AOL-dominated email, security wasn’t a huge issue. People used their email at home to communicate with friends and family. Wifi wasn’t a thing, so email security wasn’t a pressing concern. That’s no longer the case.

We use our email for work, shopping, sending confidential documents to lawyers, doctors, and other professionals. Our credit card information and other financial information lives in our email accounts. 

So how secure public wifi for our vital email security?

The Stakes of Email Security

Basically, if a hacker gets into your email, he has found a gold mine. When you connect to a WiFi network, your data is stored on the router for that network.

Using public wifi increases your susceptibility to this type of cybercrime because a hacker can set up a network in a public location, thereby gaining access to your data. This includes your email username and password.

How Can You Protect Yourself?

It’s an almost impossible job to refuse to ever link up to a public WiFi network. We take our jobs with us everywhere. We store important documents in our email that we need to reference when we are on the go. So, how do we protect our email?

Two-Factor Authentication

If your email allows you to require two-factor authentication, use that. This requires a notification to be sent another one of your devices, such as a cell phone, before a new sign-in attempt is allowed. Chances are the hacker won’t have access to both devices.

The Official Network

You can ask the establishment for the name of their network to help authenticate which network you are actually using. This isn’t a sure-fire way to protect yourself, but it’s one step in the right direction.

Trustwire: Always Safe

If you find yourself away from your secure home network, and you need to send or access files, look to Trustwire as a way to do this without compromising your email security. Trustwire functions kind of like email, in that you can access it from anywhere. What’s more, it’s easy to use.

Trustwire is different from email in that it uses the strongest form of encryption to protect your data, no matter where you access our web-based portal. Send your documents from the local coffee shop using Trustwire and be assured that even the most savvy hackers cannot access it. Problem solved. Click here to learn more.