How can I use public Wi-Fi safely?

Public Wi-Fi in a cafe, hotel, or airport is convenient, but you cannot be sure who else is on it - or whether the network is even genuine. The risk is not that Wi-Fi is magic for hackers; it is that an open network does not protect what you send, and a fake one can be set up to listen. A couple of habits remove almost all of the danger.

What to watch for

Fake look-alike networks. A scammer can create a hotspot with the same name as the real one - an "evil twin". Join it by mistake and they can see what you do, so check the exact name with staff.
Open networks. A network with no password does not scramble your traffic. Treat anything you do on it as potentially visible.
Doing sensitive things. Banking, work email, and entering passwords are the worst things to do on a network you do not trust.

Safer habits

Use your phone's own mobile data, or a personal hotspot, for anything important - it is far harder to snoop on than open Wi-Fi.
Turn on a VPN before you connect. It scrambles everything you send, so a snooper sees only gibberish.
Avoid logging into anything sensitive, and turn off auto-join so your phone does not silently reconnect to open networks later.
Tell your device to "forget" the network when you leave.

If you only do one thing

For anything sensitive, use your own mobile data instead of public Wi-Fi - or a VPN if you must connect.