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What Travelling to 100 Countries Teaches You About Online Safety

Somewhere around the hundredth country, the flights stop being the hard part. Visas, transfers, and border queues become routine. What keeps demanding attention is quieter: the hotel Wi-Fi you didn’t choose, the booking link a stranger sent, the phone that holds your passport scan, your bank app and your boarding pass in one pocket. 

Travelling widely doesn’t make anyone immune to online risk. If anything, it multiplies the number of unfamiliar networks and situations you pass through, and a few habits turn out to matter far more than the rest.

Every network is a stranger’s network

The first lesson is that public Wi-Fi in airports, hostels and cafés is shared with people you will never meet, on equipment you can’t vet. That matters when the same phone handles banking, email and travel bookings. 

Many long-term travellers route their traffic through a VPN on unfamiliar networks so it stays encrypted, and some start with a free VPN before deciding whether a paid plan is worth it. The trade-off deserves attention as free services vary widely in how they fund themselves and what they log, so read the privacy policy and check the provider’s reputation before installing anything.

A VPN is one layer, not a shield. It does nothing about phishing messages, fake login pages or an out-of-date operating system. Turn on two-factor authentication for email and banking, install updates before you leave home, and where possible use your own mobile data or a local eSIM instead of an open network for anything sensitive.

Tourist strips teach caution

I’ve lived in Thailand for years, and Khao San Road is a masterclass in how tourist strips work. 

It’s cheap, loud, and friendly, and it comes with hawkers who spot a newcomer instantly and taxi drivers who quote a very different price the moment they hear where you’re headed. Almost none of it is dangerous, but all of it rewards the same instinct: slow down, ask the price, and don’t take the first offer.

The online version looks like a discount booking link from someone you just met, an accommodation listing that seems too good to be true, or a message pushing you to pay outside the platform. Scammers work busy places for the same reason touts do. Tired, jet-lagged people decide quickly, and quick decisions are what they’re counting on.

Plan for the weather, and for the outage

Remote trips teach redundancy. When I wrote about climbing Mount Vinson, the recurring theme was that the schedule belongs to the weather. Flights can be grounded for days, and nobody refunds you because Antarctica ignored the itinerary. You carry what you need because nobody else can bring it to you.

The digital equivalent is a small kit of backups. Keep offline copies of your passport, visas and insurance policy, store your two-factor backup codes somewhere other than the phone that might get lost, and screenshot key bookings. If a device is stolen, drowned or flat, you can still prove who you are and get back into your accounts.

Keep the phone, protect it

There’s a popular idea that the healthiest way to travel is to unplug completely. A Forbes piece on the digital detox trend argues the opposite on safety grounds. 

It describes the phone as a lifeline for emergencies and insurance claims, and quotes a cybersecurity expert who says lost, disconnected travellers are easier for criminals to target. It also cites a TripIt survey in which 85 percent of travellers hoped to unplug from their phones.

I’d take the middle path. Mute the notifications, but keep the device charged, locked, and updated, with maps downloaded in advance. Being less distracted and being less safe are not the same thing.

Small habits that travel well

The rest is unglamorous. Use a password manager instead of reusing passwords across the accounts you’ll log into from strange places. 

Carry your own charger and plug into a wall socket rather than a public USB port. Keep a separate card or payment method for travel so a compromised number doesn’t touch your main account. Log out of shared computers, and treat any request to “verify” a booking by clicking a link as a reason to open the official app yourself instead.

Over enough countries, online safety stops being a list of rules and becomes a rhythm: check the network, question the offer, back up the essentials, and keep a way to call for help. 

None of it takes long, and all of it is easier to set up at home than to improvise in an airport at midnight.