Just realized my internet setup in Bali was a security risk

Chatted with a cybersecurity guy at a co-work in Canggu last week and he showed me how my public wifi VPN was leaking data. He pulled up my IP and location in under 2 minutes. Now I'm paranoid about every cafe I work from - anyone else double-check their setup after a convo like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

beth_hunt9d ago

Haha, "rosejackson" says turn off auto-connect and stop worrying - that's exactly what I told myself until I realized my VPN was basically a fancy sticker. I was using a free one that promised "military grade encryption" but actually just routed my data through a server run by a guy in his mom's basement (probably). Now I check my connection by seeing if my IP shows up as "Bali, Indonesia" or "somewhere in a coffee shop in Texas" - spoiler alert, it was the latter, and not in a fun way.

rosejackson9d ago

Question whether one guy with a laptop really makes it that serious. Pretty sure the average cafe snooper isn't running deep packet analysis on every random tourist's connection. Maybe just turn off auto-connect and stop worrying so much.