Keeping your account safe on public Wi-Fi

The real risk today

Accessing your account over public Wi-Fi — a café, a station, a hotel — used to be genuinely risky. Today, because connections to sites like ours are encrypted end to end, the data you send can't simply be read off the network. The main residual risks are fake hotspots and shoulder-surfing rather than interception.

Sensible precautions

• Use your own device, not a shared or public computer.
• Prefer your mobile data or a trusted network for anything sensitive; if using public Wi-Fi, a reputable VPN adds a layer.
• Check you're on the real network, not a look-alike hotspot with a similar name.
• Be aware of who can see your screen.

Let your account defend itself

The strongest protection is layered account security that doesn't depend on the network at all: two-factor authentication or a passkey means even a captured password is useless, and alerts flag anything unexpected.

When to wait

If you only need to check a balance, public Wi-Fi on your own device is fine. For a sensitive change — bank details, adding a user — consider waiting for a trusted network. And never do it on a shared machine; see shared computers.