Is a VPN worth it for public Wi-Fi?

For a narrower reason than the warnings suggest — and that reason is real.

The threat is not what it was

The classic warning describes someone on the same café network reading your bank details out of the air. That was a genuine risk when most of the web was unencrypted. Today almost every site uses HTTPS, and your browser will object loudly if one does not, so the contents of what you send are already protected before a VPN is involved.

If a page you are using shows a padlock, its contents are encrypted between you and that site whether or not you use a VPN. That is worth knowing, because it tells you what a VPN is actually adding.

What a VPN still adds

Three things, and they are worth having on a network you do not control.

  • Which sites you visit stops being visible. HTTPS hides the contents but not the destination — whoever runs the network can still see every domain you connect to. A VPN removes that.
  • A hostile network cannot redirect you as easily. Captive portals and tampered DNS are a real nuisance on unfamiliar networks.
  • Your device stops announcing itself to the local network. Useful on a network shared with strangers.

That is a genuine improvement on a network you do not control, and a much smaller one at home where you already know who runs the router.

What it will not protect you from

Worth being precise about, because someone who buys a VPN believing it covers these is worse off than before — they have the same exposure and more confidence.

  • Phishing. A convincing fake login page works identically over a VPN.
  • Downloads. A VPN encrypts a malicious file exactly as carefully as a safe one.
  • A compromised site. If the site itself is the problem, the tunnel to it is not.
  • Account takeover. A leaked password is a leaked password. Two-factor authentication is what covers this, and it is free.
  • Anything you type into a fraudulent page. Encryption protects it in transit and delivers it to the fraudster intact.

Check the network you are on

The public Wi-Fi check asks a short set of questions and tells you what is actually worth doing on the network in front of you, ranked. Some of it — turning off file sharing, checking you are on the network you think you are — matters more than a VPN does and costs nothing.

For the longer version, is public Wi-Fi safe? goes through what changed and why.