Staying safe on the road and online

By David Simon

Road trips – few methods of travel inspire such romance and wanderlust as getting in a car or saddling up on a motorcycle and disappearing into the distance. Whether you’ve planned everything meticulously in advance or you just stop wherever takes your fancy, there’s nothing quite like a road trip for the experience of a lifetime.

 Naturally, technology has made both planning and driving a road trip considerably easier than it was, say, 50 years ago. Novels like ‘On the Road’ by Jack Kerouac, 50s beat generation author, or darker, more violent post-apocalyptic tomes such as The Road by Cormac MccArthy, penned in 2006, depict journeys to who knows where from anywhere else. Conversely, there are now online travel guides that itemise every detail of planning a trip with corporate precision, from choosing the best type of room in a given hotel to selecting a dish from the dinner menu.

 The great thing about tech is that you can use it as much or as little as you want when planning or executing a road trip. But there is always an element of online criminality that can catch the unwary traveller. Phantom Wi-Fi networks and scam emails can come from unexpected sources and it’s all too easy to have bank accounts hacked or devices compromised. The best way to avoid this happening when on the road is to download a free VPN onto any hardware you’re using on your travels.

 A virtual private network (VPN) simply places an encrypted third-party ‘middleman’ server between your device and your wider internet connection. VPN servers are encrypted so it’s impossible to tell the actual location or identity of the person using them. It’s this anonymity and geo-cloaking that keeps VPN users safe from internet nasties; together with the fact that reputable VPN providers’ servers carry state-of-the-art anti-virus and malware detection. This is particularly useful in guarding against phantom W-Fi scams that can install spyware onto any phone or laptop PC. Here’s how the baddies do it:

Phantom Schmantom

 Imagine driving your hired car down Route 66 on your once-in-a-lifetime trip across the USA. You come across a roadside diner with a car park full of 66ers like yourself. You pull in to top up with gasoline and grab a coffee. Walking into the restaurant area, you see a chalkboard above the counter that reads: Free Wi-FI available - 66Diner - password = 66d1n3r.

 You get your coffee, sit down and log onto the Wi-Fi, barely noticing that the network with that name seems to appear twice in your Wi-Fi connection dialogue. Thinking nothing of it, just a glitch, you log on and check your email. A message comes through entitled ‘25% off your next meal at 66 Diner’. You click on and a tempting offer is explained, together with a download link to a voucher code.

 What has just happened is that your device has been compromised by keystroke recording spyware. You won’t have noticed him, but a solitary nondescript guy sitting in a corner with a MacBook Pro has set up a phantom hotspot with the same nomenclature and password as the café’s genuine network. There’s a 50% chance that you logged into the scam network. That voucher link just installed spyware on your machine. The next time you log onto your social media, online bank or webmail, your keystrokes will be recorded. Not a good start to your holiday!

 But if you had connected to that same network via a VPN server, the instant that any malware was detected, the VPN client would disconnect your device instantaneously from that hotspot. Whilst it is true to say that if you had up to date virus protection that would ‘isolate’ the malware, but a belt-and-braces approach of disconnection is more reassuring.

Save money while travelling by using a VPN.

 Another advantage of using a VPN when away from home (or indeed even if you are at home) is the geo-cloaking facility that allows you to avoid dynamic pricing and currency exchange rip-offs. There is a commonly held belief, often refuted by the perpetrators of such practices, that the artificial intelligence (AI) in the analytics software of online shopping sites offers prices based on what it ‘thinks’ you can afford. The system works using pre-programmed value judgements, detecting your type of device and your internet protocol (IP address). This lets the AI know where you are accessing the website from and what machine you’re using at the time. Whether you’re hiring a car in the UK or taking a flight from California, the principle is the same.

 For example, if you are starting your road trip from New York, and you log onto a hotel reseller portal for your next day’s accommodation – if your IP address reveals that you’re in Manhattan using the very latest iPhone, the chances are that you’re relatively wealthy. That motel room in New Jersey just went up in price by 20%. Conversely, if you were looking to book the same motel room but your IP address was located in a West Virginia trailer park, using a 10-year-old HP laptop, that same room might be offered quite a bit cheaper.

 By using a VPN, you can choose wherever in the world you’d like to appear to be located, and the nature of your device remains untraceable. This is also particularly useful if booking flights or hotels in a different country. Let’s say you were living in the UK, and planning a trip to Paris, France. The target website detects your IP address as England and offers you a price in GBP£ Sterling, say £99. But if you use a VPN to place yourself effectively in France, you could choose to pay in Euros and the price displayed may come down to say €85. Reseller websites end up paying the hotel the going rate, but their exchange rates are very disadvantageous to any foreign buyer.

Faster connections and TV streaming

 Finally, another major advantage of a VPN is that when streaming a TV programme on say, Netflix, you might find your content blocked if you aren’t in your home country. To make matters worse, some ISPs (internet service providers) slow down or ‘throttle’ connections to TV streaming sites. Using a VPN can unlock content in your home country by choosing a domestic server and avoid throttling because the ISP doesn’t know where the connection is sourced.

 All in all, when travelling or staying at home, there are many good reasons for installing a VPN; in fact, it’s something of a no-brainer.