Select a network on the left. If it’s secured, type the password shown and press Connect.
Select a network on the left. If it’s secured, type the password shown and press Connect.
You know who runs these networks, and they are protected with a password.
Reading news, checking maps and looking things up is fine. Avoid internet banking, MyGov, and typing passwords or card numbers; do those at home, or switch to your phone’s mobile data.
A public network is a shared space. You do not know who set it up, who else is on it, or how well it is run. Information sent over an unprotected connection can travel as plain text, like a postcard: anyone handling it along the way can read it.
Most websites today use a secure connection (the address starts with https and the browser shows a padlock ), which seals the postcard inside an envelope. That helps a lot, but it is not the whole story: a fake hotspot can still steer you to counterfeit login pages, the network owner can still see which sites you visit, and one slip on a non-secure page can expose what you typed.
So the rule of thumb many people in the NT have never been told: free Wi-Fi itself is not the danger; it is what you log in to while you are on it. Browse freely, but keep banking, government accounts and anything with a password for your home network, your phone’s data, or a work VPN (next tab).
That is the pop-culture version. Streaming ads sell VPNs as a way to appear to be in another country, and yes, they can do that. But it is a side effect, not the point.
A VPN (virtual private network) builds an encrypted tunnel from your device to another network you trust, usually your employer’s. Everything you send travels through that tunnel scrambled. Whoever runs the Wi-Fi you happen to be on, a hotel, an airport, a café, sees only scrambled traffic going to one address; not the sites you visit, not the files you open, not what you type.
This is why workplaces give staff a VPN. Staff work from home, hotels and airports, on networks the employer cannot vouch for. The VPN makes any of those networks behave like a direct, private cable back to the office, so company logins, client records and internal systems stay protected wherever staff happen to sit. It is also how you reach systems that only exist inside the office network.
One honest caveat: a VPN protects data in transit. It does not stop you clicking a scam link or reusing a weak password; judgement still required.