How to keep your data safe while travelling abroad

Travel is when your normal, safe home routine falls apart. You’re hopping between unfamiliar Wi-Fi networks, maybe borrowing a hotel’s computer, using your phone in a country whose rules you don’t know. It’s exactly the situation opportunists count on. A little preparation goes a long way — here’s the checklist I run through before and during any trip.

Before you leave

Update everything — your phone, laptop and apps — so you’re not travelling with known holes. Turn on two-factor authentication for your important accounts, but make sure you can actually receive the codes abroad (an authenticator app beats SMS when roaming is unreliable). Back up your devices, so a lost or stolen phone is an inconvenience, not a catastrophe. And install and test your VPN at home, before you’re depending on it in an airport.

On the road

Treat every network as untrusted — hotel, café, airport, all of it. Turn your VPN on before you connect to anything, and set it to auto-connect on unknown networks so you can’t forget in a jet-lagged haze. This matters more abroad than at home: you have no idea who runs these networks or how well they’re secured. We go deeper on this in is hotel Wi-Fi safe.

Never use a shared or hotel-lobby computer for anything that involves logging in. You can’t know what’s installed on it, and a keylogger will happily capture your passwords. If you must, change those passwords from your own device as soon as you can.

Keeping access to home

Travel throws up a second, smaller annoyance: your usual services behave differently abroad. Your bank may flag a foreign IP, and sites may show you a different country’s content or language. Connecting to a VPN server back home makes your connection look like it’s coming from your own country, which keeps your services working the way you expect. You can pick from locations worldwide on the servers page.

Physical basics people forget

Lock your devices with a strong PIN or biometrics, not a swipe pattern anyone can watch over your shoulder. Turn off automatic Wi-Fi joining so your phone doesn’t silently connect to a lookalike network. And keep Bluetooth off when you’re not using it. None of this is high-tech — it’s just the stuff that’s easy to skip when you’re tired and in a hurry, which is precisely when it matters.