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My real-world approach to staying secure while working abroad, from hotel Wi-Fi worries to the small habits that actually make a difference.
I run this whole travel blog from wherever I happen to be sitting. A hotel lobby in Budapest, an Airbnb kitchen table in the Yucatán, waiting around for my next flight at Gatwick airport. It’s the way I’ve always done things for the past 13 years. But it also means I’m constantly hopping onto networks I know nothing about. For years I was far too relaxed about what that actually meant for my accounts, my photos, and my clients’ data.
A scare with a compromised login a few years back in Sri Lanka changed that. My accounts were hacked, and I’ve been fearful that it will happen again ever since. Trust me, it’s a bit of a trip-wrecker when you’re scrambling around changing passwords and seeing what accounts have been compromised.
These days, staying secure while I work from the road is as much a part of my travel routine as packing a spare camera battery. I thought I’d share what that actually looks like in practice. Hopefully some of these online security tips can help you while on the road.
Contents:
The problem with “just popping online”
Every time you connect to hotel Wi-Fi, an airport network, or a café hotspot, you’re sharing that network with strangers. The scary thing, some public networks are set up in a way that makes it worryingly easy for someone else on that same connection to see what you’re doing. If you’re just scrolling Instagram, that’s a minor annoyance at worst. If you’re logging into your email, your banking app, or a client’s shared drive, it’s a different story entirely.
I learned this the hard way after noticing some odd login activity on an account following a work trip. Nothing catastrophic happened, thankfully, but it was enough of a wake-up call to make me properly sort out my approach to working on public networks rather than just hoping for the best.
Quick fixes for quick stops
The truth is, most of my “work” while travelling is bursts of five or ten minutes. It’s replying to an email before boarding, uploading a file between sightseeing, checking analytics while my kids finish their ice creams. For those moments, I don’t want to be messing about with a full VPN client that slows everything down or eats my battery.
This is where a browser-based option has become my go-to. I use the CyberGhost Chrome extension for exactly this kind of situation. It encrypts my browser traffic in a couple of clicks, without needing to touch the rest of the laptop’s settings. It’s genuinely handy for those in-between moments when I just need to get something done securely and get on with enjoying wherever I am. I think this is something that’s going to get more and more important over time too.
When you’re settling in for longer
Not every trip is a whistle-stop. Some of my favourite trips these days are the slower ones. Two or three weeks based in one place rather than a new city every other day. It fits with how I like to travel generally, echoing that whole idea of quiet travel where you’re not racing between sights but actually settling into somewhere.
This slower pace helps your security too. Stay somewhere for a week rather than a night, and it’s worth spending ten minutes checking what you’re actually connecting to. Look at the accommodation’s router settings if you can. Be more deliberate about what you log into. Let pending software updates finish, rather than cancelling them on your way out the door. If you work remotely, this really matters.
Building better habits, not just better tools
No single tool fixes bad habits, so alongside using something like the CyberGhost extension for quick browsing security, I’ve picked up a few other bits of routine that make a genuine difference:
- Use a privacy screen where I can. It’s a small thing, but it stops the person behind you on a train reading your screen over your shoulder.
- Turn off auto-connect for Wi-Fi. I don’t want my phone or laptop silently joining random open networks the second I walk past them.
- Switch off Bluetooth in busy places. Airports and stations are a good example. It’s the same instinct that makes me keep my camera bag zipped up on the metro.
None of this is complicated, and none of it requires becoming a different kind of traveller. It’s really just an extension of the same common sense most of us already apply to travel – the same instinct that makes you check flight times twice or keep half an eye on your bag in a busy square, just pointed at your devices instead.
It’s all part of looking after yourself on the road
I always think of digital habits as sitting alongside the more obvious stuff, the sort of thing I’ve covered in my healthy travel tips. Things like staying hydrated, managing jet lag, not skipping meals because you’re stuck on a delayed connection. Looking after your accounts and your data is just another part of that same picture: the boring, practical groundwork that means the fun bit of travelling – the actual travelling – goes a lot more smoothly.
You don’t need to overhaul how you travel or work to stay secure on the road. For me, it comes down to a few small habits. I use a lightweight browser extension for quick tasks. I take more care and patience when I’m settled somewhere longer. And I treat my laptop with the same wariness I’d give an unlocked hotel room door. It’s not glamorous. But it means I can log on from a beach bar in the Canaries without that nagging worry in the back of my mind.
