Escapees March-April 2019 Vol 40 Issue 5

Tips

Helpful Hints, Ideas and Solutions for Today’s RVer                 

     passwords, usernames and other details. This is of greater concern if you check your bank account, e-mail, Facebook or other social media site. Accessing those sites on a public WiFi can be a security risk.                                                                         

The first line of defense is to make sure you use different passwords for every site. That way, if you do get hacked, the attacker only has one of your passwords and not all of them. There are many other ways to minimize risk online, but there are two major ways to prevent someone from accessing your informa- tion on a public WiFi in the first place.   Make sure you see the lock icon on the left side of your address bar in your browser when inputting personal information on a website. The lock icon, along with “HTTPS” in front of the address, lets you know that you are using the secure version of HTTP. Entering information into a site that uses only “HTTP” is sent to the website as plain text. This means

Park WiFi is notoriously spotty, and the speed varies substantially from park to park, but the most concerning issue with park or public WiFi is the lack of security. Parks that hire professionals to set up their networks can do a decent job of providing security to a network. However, problems can arise at other parks that buy routers and antennas and have a local, self-appointed tech guru set it up.      While you are connected to the park’s WiFi system, you are connected to a router. Always keep in mind that every- one else in the park is also connected to that router. This means you are not surfing the web alone in the privacy of your RV. Your computer and any other

device you have connected to that network is, in a way, connected to every other person’s computer or device on that router. Anyone who may want to snoop in on what you’re browsing can simply find their way to your device on that router. The parks that hire a company to set up their system may have a few security measures in place to make it more difficult to find your computer on a network, but that doesn’t make it impossible. Many WiFi networks are vulnerable to “man-in-the-middle” attacks. This is where an attacker diverts Internet network traffic through their machine before it reaches the router. Once the traffic reaches their machine, they can sort through the information for

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