Travelling is about more than just taking in new foods, cultures, and scenic views. It's also about stepping outside of our normal comfort zones, whether this involves a protracted trip, a cramped bus ride, communication difficulties with the locals, or extreme and unusual weather.
But in the digital world, problems can happen both online and offline. People must connect to risky public Wi-Fi networks while travelling in order to, for example, browse the internet.
Even worse, some countries impose stringent limitations on what internet users can and cannot do. All of this indicates that whenever travellers use a foreign internet connection, they may be putting their digital privacy—or worse—at danger.
Travel-related internet scams could be the first thing that springs to mind when thinking about tourist cyber-traps. Tourists are one of the prime targets of criminals' aggressive phishing attempts of all stripes.
When compared to prior fiscal years, Action Fraud, the UK's national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, saw a startling increase of more than 120%. This indicates that victims in the UK alone lost a total of more than £7 million.
With aggregate scores of 15.15 percent and 20.15 percent, respectively, threat analysts at tech radar identified that China and Cuba are the most dangerous tourist destinations online.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, China received very poor marks in the categories of censorship (1.89%) and cybersecurity (2.91%). As well as its intrusive surveillance methods, the Great Firewall is well known for severely limiting what people may do and view online. To protect your data and get around restrictions, experts advised utilising a reliable China VPN.
Egypt, which ranks fourth overall and third worst for censorship, is another nation that, although bringing in millions of tourists each year, could quickly turn into a cyber-nightmare if the proper online security measures aren't taken.
The United Arab Emirates has the lowest data privacy score of any nation (8.33%) when it comes to web tracking.
To keep safe online while travelling overseas, Andreas Theodorou, TechRadar's resident expert on digital privacy, provided the following advice:
"A reliable VPN is a non-negotiable essential if you plan on using public WiFi abroad. There are so many opportunities for your information to be stolen and your device to be compromised—it's like playing Russian roulette with your digital privacy," Theodorou explained.
Estonia received a score of 91.48%, making it the country with the highest overall rating for online safety. The results for internet access and cybersecurity were very encouraging, each receiving a perfect grade.
Kenya, Germany, France, Costa Rica, the United Kingdom, and Canada are among the top 10 safest nations in the world, according to scores.
Despite ranking lower than Japan, South Africa, Hungary, and Italy and just slightly higher than South Korea, the US is one of the top 20 safest nations. Argentina, Colombia, and Singapore are also included in the top twenty.
Privacy tips
Tourists who want to follow their favourite TV shows or sporting events while travelling might benefit greatly from VPNs. The top geo-restricted material unblockers can unblock a tonne of content from any location in the world, while some are more effective than others.
When travelling, there are more opportunities to browse risky websites and/or download infected files, thus it is useful to always have one of the best antivirus programmes running on your laptop or smartphone. Also helpful in this situation might be a safe, tracker-free browser.
Before leaving, users should also verify the privacy settings on their devices. This entails checking that the operating system and any installed apps are both current. Since some security programmes might be prohibited in the country users are visiting, it is essential to download and install them all before leaving.