One of the beauties of working online is the fact that we can work from the comfort of our own homes, or indeed we can work from anywhere else we can get access to a free wi-fi hotspot.

This can be anywhere from your local library, to coffee shops, to internet shops, to airports or train stations - anywhere where you will see the signs shown in the picture above.

However, did you know that most public wi-fi hotspot have no security firewalls installed in the system? This means that whichever data is transmitted at any one time on that public network can be literally read by anybody logged on that network. Because, data is not encrypted, but is sent out in plain text!!!

This means that cyber criminals can easily 'snif' your personal details, such as stealing your passwords, login details and any other sensitive information, and they can then use them to commit an offence, or indeed sell such information to third parties.

In fact, it is deemed that some cyber criminal will go to the length of setting up their own free wi-fi hotspot to access individuals' private and personal data!!!

So, does this all means we are not to use public free wi-fi hotspots anymore? Not at all!

But you can adopt the following precautions in order to protect your data:

• use a Virtual Private Network (VPN), which will use encryption on your data, so that it cannot be read openly anymore (I got mine for free from my phone network provider);
  
• do not do anything in public that you don't want others to see - don't do online banking, do not access emails, particularly when containing sensitive information, and don't access anything containing usernames and passwords;
  
• if unsure of the security of the wi-fi hotspot you are using, do not connect to the public network, but use your 3G or 4G data connection instead - 3G and 4G encrypt data.
  

Finally, let me tell you a little bit more about how to wisen up to the USE OF SOCIAL MEDIA. Go to page 5 for a few useful tips.