Network Security While Traveling?

truesaer writes "I'll be spending all of next year backpacking through South America. In the past I've used Internet cafes while away, but this time I plan to bring a netbook and rely primarily on Wi-Fi hotspots. I'll be facing the same issues and risks that business travelers in hotels and airports face, as well as those encountered by millions of other backpackers, gap-year travelers, and students. Since my trip is so long I'll have no choice but to access my banking, credit card, and investment accounts on public networks. I will not have a system at home to connect through. Other than an effective firewall, a patched system, and the use of SSL, what else should I do to protect my information? Keep in mind that many places have very poor bandwidth and latency."

Comments

Re:SSH & SOCKS Proxy

[Krneki]

This.

Or get a classic WRT54GL router with tomato. So you can connect to your home SSH server (SSH service running on tomato).
Also keep an eye on your firewall and remove all the exception you don't know what they are for, if you are running Windows. If you are on Linux you are safe of course.

If you use public Internet caffe, get Firefox portable on USB stick and configure it to use your SSH tunnel. You don't need any Admin privileges to make it work. Also very effective to bypass any firewall that might be setup (China).