In the 21^st Century stalkers no longer need to follow you, they can simply gain access to your mobile device to know where you are, and you wouldn’t have a clue until it was too late.

Whether you’re traveling to the grocery store or going on a trip to Europe, it’s important to exercise caution when using your mobile device.

When you leave your home or office, you also leave the safe boundaries of your protected internal network, which is configured to keep hackers away. Are you concerned yet? You should be.

It’s possible for anyone to figure out exactly what you’re doing on a mobile device when you’re connected to an unencrypted Wi-Fi network. Applications such as WireShark allow anyone to see everything that’s been transferred to and from your smartphone, laptop, or tablet.

In addition, there’s a growing community of “wannabe” hackers who spend their time hacking into anything interesting on mobile phones. Then whatever they find is posted on various forums online for the whole world to see, or at least anyone who’s interested in seeing it.

So how can you protect your mobile device and data when you’re traveling? There are a few ways to do this:

1. Don’t join unencrypted Wi-Fi networks. If you don’t have to type a password or code to get into a network, it should be avoided. These networks are where most hackers tend to lurk, and they’ll have access to your account details and credit card information when/if you send it across the network.

Of course, many transactions are encrypted but there are always going to be holes. If you need to use an unencrypted Wi-Fi network, restrict your activity to websites that use the “https” prefix, and avoid the ones that use “http” in the address.

1. Remember to use onion routing, a virtual private network (VPN), an SSH (Secure Shell) proxy, or any network that involves an adequate degree of encryption. By doing so, you can connect to your local network without anyone seeing your data.
2. Make sure your employees know these tips when connecting to Wi-Fi if they’re carrying sensitive business data on their mobile devices. It’s important that your entire staff understands how to protect important data. Otherwise, your business can be put at risk.

Most of us would like to believe that the online world is safe, but in actuality, that’s far from the truth. Protect your mobile devices and your data by following the simple tips above.