"What if I don't have a choice and need to use an
unsecured hotspot? What can I do?!?!?!?!
"This is the number one question. I left it at the end because
the other questions build a good foundation as to why you need to
do this.
"VPN - if you must do work through an unsecured wireless access
point then a VPN is the most secure way to go by far. A VPN allows
you to tunnel all your traffic through it and it encrypts
everything along the way until the server you initiated the VPN
with gets the data and then decrypts it. The assumption is that the
most insecure transmission occurs before reaching the VPN server,
at which time there is no need for it be encrypted anymore (this is
a very simplified breakdown of VPNs). If you are a casual user and
don't have a work VPN but want everything to be secure then you can
sign up for services such as hotspot-vpn which allows you to vpn
into their servers. Many other companies offer services for a
relatively cheap price."
