Working from a café without leaking your work

Most advice about working in public is about the Wi-Fi. In practice the Wi-Fi is the least of it, because HTTPS already covers the traffic. The realistic risks are older and more physical.

What actually goes wrong

Somebody reads your screen. Client names, salary figures, a customer list, the email you are drafting about a colleague. No hacking required, and it is by far the most common leak.

Somebody hears your call. An hour of video calls in a café is an hour of your company's business read aloud to strangers.

Your bag walks off. Laptop theft in cafés is ordinary crime and it is the single most expensive thing that can happen to you in one.

Your phone joins a network by itself. Devices reconnect to remembered names automatically, and a network name can be spoofed.

The fixes, in order of value

1. Sit with your back to a wall. Free, instant, and it solves the biggest problem on the list.

2. A privacy filter for your laptop screen. About twenty pounds, and it makes the screen unreadable from an angle. If you work in public regularly this is the best money you will spend.

3. Take the laptop with you. To the counter, to the toilet, every time. "It was only two minutes" is how every one of these starts.

4. Full disk encryption, on. FileVault on a Mac, BitLocker on Windows, both usually on by default now — check rather than assume. A stolen encrypted laptop is a hardware loss. An unencrypted one is a data breach you have to report.

5. Lock the screen when you stand up. Ctrl+Cmd+Q on a Mac, Win+L on Windows. Make it automatic after a minute too.

6. Do not take sensitive calls in public. Not a security setting, just a decision.

The network part

Turn off auto-join for open networks. Your device will otherwise connect to anything with a familiar name. iPhone: Settings, Wi-Fi, Ask to Join Networks, and turn off Auto-Join Hotspot. Android: Settings, Network, Wi-Fi preferences.

Prefer your own mobile hotspot. Usually faster than café Wi-Fi anyway, and it removes the category entirely.

If you use the café Wi-Fi, use a VPN. This is the honest case for one: you are on a network run by people you cannot identify, shared with strangers, and a VPN means they see one encrypted connection instead of a list of everywhere you went. Make sure the kill switch is on, or a two-second dropout puts you back on the open network without telling you. There is more in what a kill switch actually does.

Never enter details into a captive portal beyond what it needs. The hotel or café sign-in page is often plain HTTP and people routinely type real personal details into them.

If your work laptop is stolen

Tell your IT team immediately, not tomorrow. They can revoke sessions and wipe the device remotely, and both of those work far better in the first hour. Nobody has ever been disciplined for reporting it fast.