I’ve long given business and leisure travelers the same advice when they set off on a trip – keep your eye on your computers and mobile devices, be cautious on public wifi networks, avoid connecting computers or memory sticks to shared computers and avoid internet café computers if you want your social network and other account logins to stay safe.
Which all means if you want to stay connected on the road, you’ve got to be pretty independent. There are techniques for using your cell phone to create a wireless hotspot that your laptop or other devices can share. You can purchase a small wireless hotspot device to power up as many as five devices in a hotel room or national park. There are even SD cards for your camera that can wireless upload photos in a snap. With a little planning your travel and associated tech and connectivity needs don’t mean a lowering of your security standards.
Yet the news cycle still carries cautionary tales that every savvy wired traveler should pay attention to. Today’s latest grim tech tale includes a warning about using hotel networks: Hotel hotspots may include unexplained pop-ups. Usually, tips for safe tech travel fall into these buckets:
Device Physical Safety – you can’t always trust hotel employees or other guests to keep their hands off your stuff. Take it with you or put it away, even hide your laptop and other mobile devices when you leave the room. I would even suggest you hide the chargers which can identify which rooms have “stuff” and which don’t. When the cleaning crew is in your room, they might not notice if another guest peeks in or even takes an item within easy reach of the open door. Minimize that potential danger by putting everything away. Where to store it? If small, put it in the room safe or in a shoe. I’ve even hung stuff in laundry bags under a jacket in the closet.
Device Security – Items can be stolen, even right off your person, so plan ahead to keep your data out of a criminal’s hands. That means put a password on everything: phone, tablet, and computer. Install anti-theft software so you can either locate or lock down the missing device, and even remotely wipe your data clean. You’ll still be left fuming but at least your data will be secure.
Safe Connections – most of us try to minimize on the road connections because they can be expensive, especially overseas. Turn off data synch or other automatic connections on your phone and devices. Plan to use hotel wifi just to upload photos or check personal email. Avoid unknown hotspots or internet cafes. They are notorious for malware or hacker activity.
Back up your data – when you’re planning your trip, you hate to think about theft but what if you lose your plane tickets, itinerary or the name of the taxi driver you’ve arranged to get you? Use a web-based email service and keep a copy of all your travel information, including a scanned copy of your passport and credit cards. Each time you receive an email confirmation, forward it to that same web-based email service. That way, if you find you’ve lost this information in the real world, you can retrieve it from any computer with a web connection.
Lastly, consider your digital photos. I have so many friends with nightmare stories of stolen cameras while on vacation. For many of us, it’s not the loss of the camera that irritates, it’s the loss of those precious digital memories. What we do in our family is have several cameras in use at once, preserving images on more than one memory card. Additionally, we try to offload those images onto devices like tablets or extra memory cards each night. When we have an internet connection, we upload the photos to an online service and some go right to our social network. In this way, we’re never entirely dependent on a single camera or family photographer.