Do you turn off your Wi-Fi when you leave the house? Hardly anyone actually does this, yet it can be the key to your phone’s security.
Turning off the Wi-Fi consciously only happens in two cases: Either there is an internet outage at home, or you are sitting on a plane going on vacation. A phone that constantly looks for open networks can become a real security risk.
Phones connect automatically
What’s the problem? When you leave home and keep Wi-Fi turned on, your smartphone constantly searches for networks. If it finds a known network, it connects directly to log you into the Wi-Fi. This can be convenient, for example, when you come home or are enjoying your tenth iced matcha latte at your favorite café instead of being at Pilates.
But not all networks are good for your phone. Attackers can trick your device into believing you are logging into an open Wi-Fi, for example, that of your café or the free Wi-Fi at the bakery around the corner. Without you noticing, you could be surfing through a foreign router, which can conduct various attacks.
Although directly hacking
a phone is not as easy today due to modern encryption, as often claimed, other tricks continue to work: For example, a foreign router can redirect you to a deceptively real-looking but fake Amazon website without your knowledge. If you log in there, the attacker can grab your login data. This is called a man-in-the-middle attack
.
I’m only connected to my home Wi-Fi, so what? Even if you never log into foreign networks, your phone leaves traces. It constantly queries the networks in the vicinity to see if they are the home network (so-called probe requests).
While this doesn’t immediately lead to a cinematic hacker attack or even a burglary, it’s a feast for data collectors. As security research shows, these constant radio signals can be easily intercepted by third parties to create movement profiles.
Department stores or advertising companies can use these signals to track how often you pass a certain shop, which routes you take, or how long you stay in a shopping mall without you noticing. From the mere convenience of keeping Wi-Fi turned on, you quickly become a transparent passerby.
How likely is that? Public networks carry real risks, but at the same time, targeted attacks happen much less frequently than one thinks. The chance of a hacker sitting in a café specifically targeting one person is extremely unlikely. The real danger today lies more in invisible data collection and automated tracking.
At the same time, you often log in everywhere simply because you are afraid of consuming your own 99-cent mobile plan with its limited 1 GB data volume. However, a few WhatsApp messages or checking the weather almost use no data at all. Therefore, you really don’t need to rush into every insecure free Wi-Fi.
To prevent your phone from constantly broadcasting which networks you know and where you are, you should make it a habit to simply turn off Wi-Fi while on the go. This not only conserves battery but also effectively protects your privacy.
While modern smartphones today typically use random MAC addresses
to make this tracking harder, the advertising industry is not idle: Once you log into a free Wi-Fi, for example in a mall, and accept the terms of service, this protection quickly disappears.
Do you turn off your Wi-Fi when you leave the house? Feel free to share it in the comments! Hacker attacks can also happen to you on Steam, even though the platform is actually considered secure: Tens of thousands use a popular app on Steam every day, and in the worst case, you might have downloaded malware with it
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!