If you live in New York City or are just visiting, you’re most likely using the free LinkNYC WiFi hotspots around the 5 boroughs to get online. LinkNYC is part of an international infrastructure project to create a network covering several cities with free WiFi service, being deployed in New York by a consortium of several companies.

As proof of the rising demand for smart city infrastructure with further projects such as LinkUK in London and LinkPHL in Philadelphia, Intersection, one of the companies involved in the deployment, just closed a $150 million funding round.

LinkNYC promises the fastest speeds for free public WiFi hotspots. But, as we’ve seen with other similar WiFi network initiatives, connectivity issues are inherent and one should also be careful about their online privacy when using public WiFi hotspots.

See below how to make sure your online privacy is safe while being always online, regardless of any faulty LinkNYC kiosks.

Speedify delivers an unbreakable VPN connection by intelligently bonding multiple internet sources, ensuring continuous uptime and encrypted protection.

Since LinkNYC free public WiFi kiosks have began to populate the streets of the Big Apple, their privacy policy has prompted controversy. In the first version of that policy from 2016, it permitted LinkNYC to store personal browser history, time spent on a particular website, and didn’t explicitly mention how LinkNYC would go about government demands or user data.

The LinkNYC privacy policy has last been updated in March of 2017, but some issues are still there, as mentioned by the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the beginning of October 2017.

As with any public WiFi network, the best way to anonymize the online traffic and protect your privacy is to use a VPN while connecting. Trouble is, most VPN solutions will slow down your Internet connection, as all the traffic is encrypted and goes through the VPN server before reaching the destination.

Speedify is a true mobile VPN that has been built from the ground up with speed in mind, while also providing real military-grade encryption to protect your online privacy.

Speedify has a strict no-log privacy policy, which means that you will not get your browsing data or any other online activities stored or sold to third party companies that would serve you “relevant” ads.

Privacy is not the only thing you should take into account when getting online with LinkNYC. If you are on the move (on the street, bus, etc.) you could also run into problems when moving between different LinkNYC hotspots. Your iPhone or Android smartphone will “navigate” from one LinkNYC free WiFi hotspot to another and even other public hotspots (Starbucks, McDonalds, etc.). So, there are many chances you stumble upon a non-working WiFi hotspot.

Plus, by default, as you’re moving around, you will be “passed” around from hotspot to hotspot, like in the case of a cellular network. Unfortunately, mobile devices don’t handle WiFi handoffs smoothly and that’s one of the reasons why LinkNYC hotspots may be disconnecting. Smartphones are bad at detecting poor Wi-Fi networks, and they default to Wi-Fi instead of LTE when it’s available. Connecting to a bad Wi-Fi hotspot is often the same as having no Internet at all.

Speedify offers patent-pending channel bonding technology for people like you and me. It basically securely combines 2 or more Internet connections for their aggregated speed and reliability. This means that you will never be offline, as your mobile device will compensate the performance of a bad WiFi hotspot with mobile data. This way, neither your streaming apps nor your VoIP calls will disconnect and you’ll be always online.

Here are 3 steps to get the most out of your LinkNYC experience in terms of privacy, speed and reliability:

1. Get Speedify on your desktop or mobile device.
2. Leave all your Internet connections active. For iPhones and Android smartphones – enable both WiFi and mobile data. Don’t worry – you can set data caps from within the Speedify app, so you won’t exceed it and pay extra. For laptops – you may have an additional 4G/LTE dongle or integrated card – activate that connection as well.
3. Enjoy faster, more reliable Internet. Speedify will automatically detect any new active Internet connections and toss them into the mix to create a faster and dependable Internet connection. If one connection should drop, Speedify will intelligently reroute the traffic to the other active connections. When the dropped connection is functional again, Speedify will use it again.

If you’re using the LinkNYC free public WiFi hotspots, stay protected online and improve the reliability of your connection with Speedify. Get started today – no strings attached!