Unlike America, the French government is encouraging VPN use amid WiFi safety concerns

I write about (and use) VPNs regularly, but even I am occasionally guilty of sacrificing safety in the name of convenience. Let's say I'm visiting a city in another country; I don't want to pay any roaming fees, but I need to figure out where I'm going, so I quickly hop onto public WiFi to glance at Google Maps for a moment. Whoopsie - I forgot to turn on my VPN first. I've been lucky so far, but it's a habit I need to break, especially with a new report from France, which highlights all the risks of public WiFi use.

This report comes from (get ready for a mouthful) the Agence nationale de la sécurité des systèmes d'information (ANSSI), or, in English, the French National Agency for the Security of Information Systems. It details cybersecurity threats facing people using mobile devices, and, notably, overtly tells people to "use a VPN" if they ever find it necessary to connect to public WiFi.

What's interesting is that guidance from US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) a couple of weeks ago essentially said the exact opposite. Not only did it neglect to even mention the risk posed by public WiFi, it actively encouraged people to avoid using VPNs - and not just dodgy free ones, but even the best VPN services. Needless to say, as I have been championing VPN use for years, while often mentioning the risks of public WiFi, I definitely agree with ANSSI here.

In addition to using a VPN if you are going to connect through public WiFi, ANSSI also recommends that you turn off the WiFi connection on your phone when you're out and not planning to use it. Meanwhile, it discourages the use of the auto-connect feature for WiFi connections you've used in the past. This is all because of new technologies which enable hackers to intercept WiFi connections, as well as the age-old trick of malicious parties giving their connection point a name that seems safe, but which is actually their point of access for sending you to phishing sites (disguised as free WiFi sign up pages) or to put malware on your phone.

It even gives guidance on how to identify which VPNs are the best for cybersecurity (because there are certainly bad ones out there). It says specifically that you should go for one that "use[s] cryptography protocols such as IPSes or TLS and must be controlled by the user in order to guarantee the confidentiality of communications."

Our partner, NordVPN, uses both of these protocols, so if you're just now realizing that you've been swimming naked with an open wound in the shark tank and want to start using a VPN on public WiFi, that would be our top recommendation.