Difference between downloading on public wifi and mobile hotspot? (midwest.social)

submitted 2 months ago by clark@midwest.social to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Not sure if I used the correct terms but what is the difference in security and privacy between downloading from a public wifi (or a closed wifi; with password) and mobile hotspot (sharing 4G/5G data from your phone to your computer)? Which one is recommended or does it not matter?

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[-] tgxn@lemmy.tgxn.net 2 points 2 months ago

It depends on his threat model and what he's trying to hide really. Public WiFi is fine, as long as you validate/check the SSL cert it's using is from your bank and is legitimate. Using public WiFi with a VPN is more secure as long as you trust your VPN provider. If he's asking these questions, then he's probably not doing banking though, and should ideally be using VPN+TOR or something similar.

[-] Petter1@lemm.ee 3 points 2 months ago

If the thing they are trying to do requires lots of data transfer, somehow, then TOR would not be ideal. Big Data makes TOR a bad experience. For that use case, a VPN alone is mostly enough (except the risks that can mitigated by reading other comments here)