Keep Your Gadgets & Data Safe While Traveling

Small business people on the road need to be aware of the risks of hackers preying on them at public hotspots, Logan Kugler says. Luckily there are some security best practices for protecting yourself.

"From coffee shops to planes, trains, and cruise ships, we've become accustomed to having ready access to the Internet just about anywhere. The problem is, it's easy to forget how vulnerable that makes us to security threats. learned this the hard way recently when traveling from San Jose to Tampa, passing through four cities along the way. Even though I'm well aware of the potential for others to hack into my devices, I'd never had any problems previously. Unfortunately, there's always a first time: When I got back home, Facebook alerted me to some suspicious activity. I had been "Firesheep'd"!

Apparently someone in Chicago (using Firefox and a Windows PC) had logged into my Facebook account via Firesheep, a Firefox extension that can intercept unencrypted cookies from certain Websites on any open Wi-Fi network, making it possible to steal login credentials for sites like Facebook and Twitter, or even access your e-mail."