Keeping Your Online Activity Safe While Travelling is Important
Airport Wi-Fi has to be signed into, is shared with the whole terminal, and is the connection you need most when a gate changes. Any of those three can leave you stuck.
Speedify is an app that combines airport Wi-Fi with your 4G/5G cellular, so a portal that will not load or a network that is saturated does not cut you off. On airport Wi-Fi alone, Speedify works as an encrypted VPN and cannot stop that connection from dropping.
Keep reading to see why the airport login page fails, and how to get faster uploads and downloads in a terminal.
With Speedify, your internet stays on when one connection fails.
Why the Airport Wi-Fi Login Page Asks You to Agree to Terms
You probably now know that some airport internet access requires you to sign in or agree to a specific page in order to access the internet. That’s called a captive portal. It’s a web page which is displayed to newly connected users before they are granted broader access to network resources. The reason for that is either to make the users log in with their credentials or accept some terms and conditions.
To connect to airport Wi-Fi, pick the airport’s network name in your Wi-Fi settings, wait for the sign-in page, and accept the terms or enter the details it asks for. If the page does not appear, open a plain http:// website in your browser to trigger it.
With that said, is it really free, and is it safe? Captive portals are to blame for a number of security issues, especially when it comes to HTTPS websites. HTTPS is meant to prevent traffic interception, alteration, and impersonation by a third party. But captive portals work by doing exactly that: they intercept and alter the connection between the user and the site they are trying to visit. On an unencrypted HTTP connection, the user would not even notice this. But for sites secured with HTTPS, the web browser detects something or someone hijacking the connection (similar to a man-in-the-middle attack). This causes “untrusted connection” warnings about fake certificates for websites that users otherwise expect to be safe.
Keeping Your Online Identity and Privacy Safe is Vital When Connecting to a Public Internet Connection
You can create a safe environment for your devices when connected to a free airport hotspot connection. All there is to do is use a VPN on your device.
A virtual private network (VPN) extends a private network across a public network. It enables users to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if their computing devices were directly connected to the private network. Applications running across a VPN therefore benefit from the functionality, security, and management of the private network.
The problem with VPNs and captive portals is they are almost incompatible. And that’s because of the way they work. When running a VPN while connecting to a network with a captive portal, the captive portal will not see the local IP address it expects to see. Instead, it detects an external IP: the VPN server’s. And this makes the captive portal not display or not work correctly.
To fix that, you can disconnect the VPN while you connect through the captive portal, or not use a VPN at all, but both leave you exposed to cyber threats. Speedify avoids that choice: it keeps you protected on networks with a captive portal.
Here’s how Speedify works with captive portals: whenever it detects one, Speedify separates the local traffic to the captive portal. It does this while keeping you connected to the Internet and secure via cellular or another connection that’s available to you. So you will be able to log in / accept the terms without any issues. Once that’s done and you’re granted access to the Wi-Fi’s Internet, Speedify will protect and optimize all your traffic.
Speedify Keeps Your Online Activities Safe and Private When You’re on an Airport WiFi
In the app, Speedify’s Captive Portal Assist feature handles Wi-Fi sign-in pages like this:
- when it detects a captive portal, it automatically moves the traffic to and from the captive portal login page outside of the encrypted VPN tunnel
- once you successfully log onto the network, Speedify moves that direct traffic back to the VPN tunnel
- you can also use the split tunneling feature (Bypass) for specific services, which sends their traffic outside the encrypted VPN tunnel.
When you use Speedify, you no longer have to choose between security, speed and stability. Speedify actually helps you have a better Internet experience in airports when you stream movies, have business conference calls, or even play online video games.
Speedify can combine multiple Internet connections at once, such as airport Wi-Fi and 4G/5G cellular, into one faster connection while still acting as a VPN.
With Speedify and two internet connections, you no longer have to worry about your Internet connection dropping: Speedify keeps you connected automatically when something goes wrong with one of them.
Stop taking chances with your online security and get a secure, stable and fast Internet connection with the fastest VPN out there.
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Speedify combines Wi-Fi, 4G/5G cellular, Ethernet, Starlink and satellite into one faster, more reliable internet connection. Free to try: 5 GB a month with a free account. No credit card required.
🚀 Speed
Faster uploads and downloads, because Speedify uses all your internet connections at once.
📶 Stability
If one internet connection drops, Speedify moves your traffic to the others in milliseconds.
🔒 Security
AES-256 encryption on every internet connection, on any network you join.
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