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Wifi question


Sheltieluv
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I will be taking my tablet with me on board the Navigator on our upcoming cruise. If I want to check my bank account to see if autopay bills have been paid, and just to verify my balance, will using the ship's wifi be secure enough to do this? Have read conflicting opinions on this subject. I know that security has become more sophisticated (supposedly), but so have the hackers out there.

 

Thanks, everyone!

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I would not trust the security of onboard wifi. More than one I have seen a notice pop up on Regent's computers stating that it is not secure (as recent as last month). Also, the last two times that we returned from a cruise my spam went up at least 50%. I've been meaning to ask the onboard guru if there is something that we can do to make our information safer but haven't done it yet. When we are onboard the Mariner next month I plan on using a different email address in the hopes that it the "new" spam will go to that address instead of the one I use daily.

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We never access our bank accounts or other financial accounts from any ships were on or hotels we stay at, it’s just not safe as we keep a fairly large amount of money in our checking accounts. Just last month we got a call from CiTi bank someone in Ohio was trying to charge over $ 700 on our credit card, we are in Arizona! This has happened many times in the past few years so we are very cautious.

We have also put a freeze on access to all our credit scores since the Equifax breach.

 

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Edited by goldenrod
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For security, I'd suggest installing a VPN. This would give you good point to point security and encryption that pretty much can only be broken by folks like the NSA. It will also enable you to hide your IP address and even what country you are in. Even your ISP can't see your communications so they can't sell your searches and browsing history.

 

Trackers for advertising are different but also easily partially solved although you may have to perform multiple fixes and installs. The easiest is to turn off google tracking (yup, google it for instructions). There are also multiple solutions for preventing trackers from being installed but trackers do some things that some people like so with each level of protection you install you also preclude some things that many people find useful.

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Thank you one and all for your responses. I confess that most of this technology stuff is beyond me, but I appreciate the information and will try to find

someone to assist in person rather than trying to figure it out on my own. :p

 

On board, I won't access my bank account or any other sensitive material. I'm glad I asked about it. I assume checking email will be okay, as well as looking at news sites?

 

Thanks again for the insight and advice!

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As Johnthesailor says use a VPN.

Try supervpn or tunnelbear, both free for light use.

 

Just signed up and tried Tunnelbear. It is really easy to use but unfortunately seems to be limited to use in certain countries. I'll try it next month when we are in the Caribbean and Brazil but do not see that these areas are included.

 

Does tunnelbear cover more countries?

 

Thanks!

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I've used HMA-hidemyass.com (as my VPN) for over 5 years. It is one of the top-rated VPNs. There is a nominal cost per month but I have never had an issue with any security breaches when checking banks and credit card postings on unsecured networks. The best part is that when you are traveling in other countries and connect to a hotel or cafe wireless your IP is hidden and appears as if it from the US. Then, the sites such as your cable provider app, Pandora, etc. aren't blocked. Also, when traveling in China and the Middle East, especially, which I often do for business, many websites including social media sites are blocked. If you have a VPN, you can sail right through it. All sites can be accessed without restrictions.

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TC2,

 

I'm not familiar with the particular VPN mentioned but in general they will all work wherever there is internet. There may not be a server used by that VPN in the country you are visiting but that is not a constraint. Whatever server you select is where you will connect and it will appear that is where you are unless you have location services on. There may be a speed penalty but that is generally true when using a VPN, especially a "free" one.

 

Since you earlier mentioned that it bothered you to be tracked for advertising purposes you may wish to consider a paid VPN where you are not the product being sold as well as taking additional precautions for tracking. Bear in mind, if you use social networks, especially FB, you are being tracked just about everywhere you go unless you are extremely diligent about taking serious precautions. But, this is quite different than the issue of being secure when doing online banking.

 

Best,

John (and Jan)

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TC2,

 

I'm not familiar with the particular VPN mentioned but in general they will all work wherever there is internet. There may not be a server used by that VPN in the country you are visiting but that is not a constraint. Whatever server you select is where you will connect and it will appear that is where you are unless you have location services on. There may be a speed penalty but that is generally true when using a VPN, especially a "free" one.

 

Since you earlier mentioned that it bothered you to be tracked for advertising purposes you may wish to consider a paid VPN where you are not the product being sold as well as taking additional precautions for tracking. Bear in mind, if you use social networks, especially FB, you are being tracked just about everywhere you go unless you are extremely diligent about taking serious precautions. But, this is quite different than the issue of being secure when doing online banking.

 

Best,

John (and Jan)

 

Thanks for the information John. I am mainly concerned about emails. I don't need to access FB while I'm on a cruise.

 

Hope. you and Jan are well and enjoying life:D

 

Jackie

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Jackie,

 

It is a bit more complicated than using FB on the cruise. If your device has touched FB historically then many (perhaps most) sites that you visit will be recorded even if you don't use FB regularly. I do not know if this translates into email advertising but there is no reason it could not as the linkages are out there.

 

 

In any case, a VPN will give you security for banking but a free one is most likely selling your contact info (you had to register) and probably a list of sites you visited since you go through their servers. It is very easy to connect this with just about anything about you including all your email addresses. Yes, it gets very scary. Some folks call me overly concerned but nobody in the business calls me paranoid.

 

 

We are doing well and just moved. Next cruise not until Jan/Feb. Hope all is well with you. Enjoy the Amazon - we did it about two years ago and very much enjoyed it although it was a difficult one with code red most of the voyage as well as significant technical problems with the emergency generator.

 

Best,

John

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Your worrying about nothing. The only thing that matters is your devices security program (Norton, Avast, Eset, etc.) That and having a strong password on on your financial account. All info is encrypted before it leaves your device. Beside, Regent and all cruise lines use the same internet connections for all of their internal on-board financial communication, such as the Purser and the Casino.

 

When is the last time there was a post on Cruise Critic that someone had there online account breached while using it on any ships system?

 

J

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My posts were about using Regent's computers - not my own. While I have my own laptop and iPad onboard, my personal preference is using Regent's computer where I can sit down with a real keyboard and print to the printer in the computer room.

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For a living I work in web security. Daily I get upwards of 75 emails excluding all the spam I sadly get. Early next year we are going to St Petersburg in Russia. ‘We’ being my wife and 11 year old daughter. For this holiday like all our others I am NOT taking my iMac, MacBook, iPad Air, iWatch or even iPhone, my wife’s not taking her iPhone, kindle or iPad and my daughter is NOT taking her iPad or iPhone. We are just taking an old phone for emergencies that takes calls and sends texts. Appreciate everyone is different but it’s no holiday for us if we are continuously ‘connected’ like we are at home! Ooops got to go, Amazon Alexa timer is going off!!! :-(

 

 

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For a living I work in web security. Daily I get upwards of 75 emails excluding all the spam I sadly get. Early next year we are going to St Petersburg in Russia. ‘We’ being my wife and 11 year old daughter. For this holiday like all our others I am NOT taking my iMac, MacBook, iPad Air, iWatch or even iPhone, my wife’s not taking her iPhone, kindle or iPad and my daughter is NOT taking her iPad or iPhone. We are just taking an old phone for emergencies that takes calls and sends texts. Appreciate everyone is different but it’s no holiday for us if we are continuously ‘connected’ like we are at home! Ooops got to go, Amazon Alexa timer is going off!!! :-(

 

 

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Wow - I agree with you in so many ways. I do believe in disconnecting on a vacation/cruise and did that for many years. Now that we are retired and my hobby is CC, I do want to report from the ship and send emails to CC friends with information that I can't post on CC. Other than that, I hear from my pet sitter every other day and almost never make phone calls (despite the fact that we get around 9 hours of included phone calls).

 

We are blessed to have visited many parts of the world that we now cruise to. We spend time visiting local (not tourist) places in port and the rest of the time enjoy the ship. Some people read, some watch movies and I post on CC (I use my iPad to take photos that I post on CC). Having said that, my posts take up less than an hour a day -- we don't watch any television and while I am an avid reader, sometimes I don't finish one book while onboard.

 

Vacations are very different when you are retired - especially when you are visiting ports that you may have been to a few times.

 

It should also be said that some people can't take a vacation unless they can connect with work (sad but true).

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Your worrying about nothing. The only thing that matters is your devices security program (Norton, Avast, Eset, etc.) That and having a strong password on on your financial account. All info is encrypted before it leaves your device. Beside, Regent and all cruise lines use the same internet connections for all of their internal on-board financial communication, such as the Purser and the Casino.

 

 

 

When is the last time there was a post on Cruise Critic that someone had there online account breached while using it on any ships system?

 

 

 

J

 

 

 

While having a strong password and AV on your device helps, it is by no means foolproof.

 

 

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While I do not pretend to be very computer savvy, I have seen messages when using Regent's computers that it is not protected (not those exact words but something to that effect). This is a fairly recent thing (within the past year) and has nothing to do with my passwords -- it is Regent's wi-fi. When I see these messages, when I return home I have twice the amount of spam than before I went on the cruise. While I cannot prove 100% the "cause and effect", it makes me leery of using Regent's computers for my emails. Not sure what they can determine from reading what I post on CC but my spam has nothing whatsoever to do with travel. About half of them could be porn sites (I don't open them and have never visited a porn site) while the others are from insurance companies and random other places.

 

I posted this to let the TS know that checking their financial information from the ship may not be a good idea. Perhaps it is safer when you use your own laptop but it is not something that I would feel comfortable doing.

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It's my understanding that using cellular data rather than wifi is more secure because the cellular data in encrypted in the phone or (cellular enabled)tablet. Of course outside ones home country cellular data can cost a pretty penny.

 

I hope some of the more IT-literate folks on the thread can confirm or refute my understanding.

 

 

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