It’s critical for all travelers to protect their laptops, tablets and smartphones from hackers.
China has a reputation in the business community of cybertheft through Internet hacking. A report to Congress on “Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage, 2009–2011,” published by the Office of the National Counterintelligence Executive in October, 2011 says, “Chinese actors are the world’s most active and persistent perpetrators of economic espionage.” In 2015, it appears as though the statement is still true.
Since 2009, travelers in many high-end hotels have been attacked by malware called “Darkhotel,” with most of the attacks occurring in Russia and other Asian countries, according to Kaspersky, which sees this as a continuing threat.
Earlier this year, security expert Shaun Murphy found, while using an in-flight WIFI service, information from his computer was being hacked, compromising passwords and other information on his laptop.
Also, this year, while staying in a major chain’s US hotel, I encountered a rogue MiFi (portable cellular based router) network attempting to spoof my hotel’s WIFI network. The MiFi network users were clearly trying to redirect hotel guests to its network to steal passwords, bank and credit card account logins, etc., and use them for their profit.
Again, this year, security experts found widely used hotel network equipment from ANTlabs was vulnerable to hackers. While the company has created a patch to eliminate the vulnerability, it’s unknown if all 277 hotels worldwide using it, installed the patch, nor if other equipment for hotel networks has similar vulnerabilities.
While cybertheft for travelers in China may be an extreme example of hacking visitors’ electronic devices, travelers everywhere, even in the US, are vulnerable and must therefore protect themselves from hackers throughout the world.
The millions of travelers who use laptops, tablets and smartphones while away from home need to be vigilant and proactive to safeguard their privacy, businesses, families and identities.
Here are a dozen commonsense, comprehensive measures travelers can employ to protect their privacy, identity and data.
1. When using your devices in public, guard against people seeing you enter usernames and passwords. In an airport gate area or lounge, don’t forget to sit so people can’t look over your shoulder from behind to watch what you’re doing.
2. Guard against theft of your devices. Don’t leave them unattended. Secure them when left in hotels while you’re out.
3. Utilize laptop hard drive password protection. Consider using full encryption of your laptop’s hard drive.
Enable tablet and smartphone lock screen passcodes. Set them to activate immediately each time their screen turns off. Set tablets and smartphones to delete their data automatically after a number of unsuccessful attempts to unlock them.
4. Always use strong passwords. Use different passwords for different accounts. Avoid typing usernames and passwords while traveling to protect yourself from “keystroke loggers.” Some people put the usernames and passwords in a file on a USB thumb drive they keep with them at all times, so they can copy and paste them on their laptop. Others use a password manager, such as Last Pass, which can log you in to your accounts automatically without you typing anything. Laptops, tablets and smartphones can use password management services such as LastPass which eliminate typing usernames and passwords.
5. Before leaving on a trip, fully update your devices’ software so they have the latest security updates installed.
6. Always use a firewall, on your laptop, whenever on a public network, like those in airports or hotels.
7. On tablets and smartphones, make sure their ability to be located is active in case of loss or theft. In the event of mobile device loss or theft, use software which can remotely wipe its data.
8. For enhanced security, use encrypted SSL/HTTPS connections on the web as often as possible. Never perform financial transactions on the web while traveling unless your connection is encrypted.
9. If communicating with your home, home office or office computer while traveling the potential threat to your privacy, identity, and data is greatly increased. Therefore you need to minimize the threat by always utilizing a VPN (Virtual Private Networking) based connection. For homes and home offices, this is easily accomplished through services such as GoToMyPC.com, which allows you to control your remote computer as if you were sitting in front of it.
10. Disable Bluetooth on all your devices to eliminate its use by hackers. Turn off all file and disk sharing while traveling. When not in use, disable WIFI connections on your devices.
11. Remember, snooping on calls made with a standard cellular connections can be easily accomplished by hackers. For any call which requires privacy while traveling, encrypt your call using applications such as Skype.
12. Use a VPN service for an encrypted, anonymous, secure connection to the Internet whenever using your laptop, tablet or smartphone to keep hackers from snooping on you. While traveling I use Private Internet Access (PIA), with servers across the globe, to connect to the Internet with my laptop, tablet and smartphone.
After many years working in corporate America as a chemical engineer, executive and eventually CFO of a multinational manufacturer, Ned founded a tech consulting company and later restarted NSL Photography, his photography business. Before entering the corporate world, Ned worked as a Public Health Engineer for the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. As a well known corporate, travel and wildlife photographer, Ned travels the world writing about travel and photography, as well as running photography workshops, seminars and photowalks. Visit Ned’s Photography Blog and Galleries.
