I am travelling and unable to log into Air Canada while on Express VPN. How can I log in on public wifi safely? I have tried a Malaysia server as well as Canada? Any suggestions?
- Turn off VPN
- Connect to wifi
- Connect the vpn
P.s. if you are not paying for wifi it won’t work because the free wifi is only for messaging and you VPN is not a known messaging app
Turn off your VPN to connect, or else your PC isn’t letting the WiFi’s captive DNS portal grab your connection and redirect you to the login portal. Using a secure/private DNS provider in Chrome gives the same issues.
Use your cellular data?
How can I log in on public wifi safely?
Sounds like you are trying to do the right thing by using a VPN, but frankly many VPN companies are overselling the security aspect of a VPN. Whenever you are connected to a website and the padlock shows in the address bar, you are secured. You do no need a VPN for that.
VPNs are largely a scam in terms scaring you about security and public wifi. There is no risk when using public wifi as all the connections to anything important are secured by TLS encryption. This not only ensures that you’re connecting to the legitimate endpoint (say your bank, or air canada) it also secures all the data being exchanged between your device and the server.
The only thing that anyone local to you would be able to know is that you are exchanging data with whatever service you’re using. Half the time, that’s just one of the big providers like Amazon AWS, Akamai, or Cloudflare. They cannot decode what you’re actually doing.
Reference: I run a campus network with about 100 users. Yes, given the tools at my disposal, I can see if someone is watching YouTube or Disney+ or surfing Reddit. What I can’t tell is if they’re on /r/aircanada or any one of the umpteen million NSFW subreddits. The actual data going back and forth between Reddit and their browser is fully secure.
VPNs are useful to get past country specific blocks, and get around copyright silliness. But also, a lot of sites block known VPN providers because that’s also where most attacks come from.
The wifi is still safe without the vpn. It uses HTTPS.
I was referring to using public wifi like at an airport or hotel. Especially where no password is used to log on
Thanks for the information that makes total sense the way you explained it. I still feel a little exposed just logging onto something like my BMO banking app from my phone while on hotel or public wifi that does not use a password (while in SE Asia). I would feel more secure using mobile data if it’s available.
Not sure what the issue is your facing but for me it was just disconnecting the VPN and it worked.