On his podcast, Clark Howard answers real reader questions on money, credit, debt, retirement, travel, and more, along with co-host Christa DiBiase.

Clark's answer: Paul, protecting yourself on public networks is actually really easy today. If you travel or stay in hotels a lot, most cell phone plans now come with robust mobile hotspots, and connecting through your own hotspot keeps you completely secure. That’s what I always do. My plan gives me up to 100 gigabytes of hotspot data a month, which is far more than I’ll ever use. Because of that, I never use public Wi-Fi at airports or hotels. Whenever I’m in a café and see everyone tapping away on their laptops or tablets, I assume they’re all logged onto the local network – something I just avoid entirely. Now, some security experts will tell you that using a Virtual Private Network (VPN) offers a decent layer of protection on public networks, and I won't argue with that. But for my own setup, I actually use both a VPN and my phone's hotspot together.