Do Not Use Public ANYTHING for Sensitive Information

Many coffee shops, airports, hotels, printing/shipping companies, and libraries have computers and Wi-Fi for public or guest use. Certainly, these can come in handy when your computer battery is dead or you are on a road trip and didn’t bring your laptop or you have a bad cell signal. Whatever the reason, if you find yourself thinking about using a public computer and/or connections, you may want to think again.

Some public computers/networks may not have protections like antivirus software and firewalls. But even more important, you don’t know what was installed prior to your session on the computer. There is no lack of opportunity to install key loggers, remote access, or other monitoring tools on public computers, so when unsuspecting persons use the computer and log in to their email, Facebook, or banking sites, the credentials are harvested without any indication. Be careful when using public Wi-Fi; this is an opportunity for man-in-the-middle attacks, whereby your traffic could be captured, snooped, replayed, etc. (even if you use SSL/TLS to connect to the site). Additionally, the wireless network you connect to may not be what you think it is. Some attackers will use a device like the Wi-Fi pineapple to spoof the names of wireless networks that your device may be looking for.

It is also important to understand what you are agreeing to when you sign up to use a free service or publicly available computer or connection. Almost every service or software you will ever use is accompanied by an end user license agreement.

Avoid using public computers if at all possible. Though some are managed better than others, you just don’t know the real state of that particular computer, nor do you know how well it is protected. You may want to think twice about even printing documents. If the document has sensitive information, is the hotel computer or printing/shipping computer the best one to use? Keep in mind that even loading a document on a computer and printing it can leave copies of that document on the computer, the print server, and the printer itself. So it’s better to be safe than sorry and avoid using public computers!