Airport Wi-Fi: The Costly Convenience Putting Travellers at Risk

Waiting for a flight can feel endless, and the airport’s “free Wi-Fi” banner is hard to resist. Cyber-security researchers say that click may be the single worst decision you make before boarding.

A Shared Network Is an Open Door

Airport hotspots are almost always unencrypted and shared by hundreds of people at once. That lets attackers sit invisibly between your device and the internet, skimming credit-card numbers, login details and anything else you type. Roughly 40 percent of Americans say they have had data stolen while using public Wi-Fi, yet two-thirds still consider it at least “somewhat safe.”

Matthew Hicks, an associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech who studies network threats, calls casual airport browsing “definitely among the worst things you can do” because every packet you send is visible to anyone who knows how to look.

Fake Networks Multiply the Danger

Even travellers who avoid the official “Free Airport Wi-Fi” can still fall for an evil-twin network set up to mimic the real thing. In 2024 Australian police charged a man who allegedly deployed such traps at terminals in Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide, harvesting travellers’ personal data.

John Breyault of the National Consumers League says the safest first step is simply verifying the exact network name with airport staff: “Make sure you’re joining the hotspot run by the airport, not a honeypot run by a criminal.”

The Price Tag of Complacency

Cyber-crime losses hit a record US $16.6 billion in 2024, up 33 percent in a single year, according to the FBI’s latest Internet Crime Report. Personal-data breaches are now among the agency’s top three complaints.

“Every airport login grows that attack surface,” Hicks warns. “People think of metal detectors and TSA checks, but forget the digital side of travel security.”

How to Stay Connected Safely

• Use your phone as a hotspot. A cellular connection creates a private tunnel that hackers on Wi-Fi cannot reach.

• Turn on a reputable VPN. Encryption scrambles your traffic so anyone snooping sees only gibberish.

• Skip sensitive tasks. Avoid online banking, email resets or shopping carts until you have a secure connection.

• Forget the network when you leave. Prevents automatic reconnection on your return journey.

“Anything you do on airport Wi-Fi should be something you’d be comfortable sharing with the whole world,” Breyault says. For most of us, that rules out more than we realise.

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