It's fine for low-stakes browsing, but it's a poor choice for banking, shopping or logging into accounts unless you take a couple of precautions. The main threat isn't the airport's real network. It's fake ones set up to look like it.
Why caution makes sense
The TSA has used its social channels to tell travelers to avoid free airport Wi-Fi for purchases and sensitive logins. A 2025 Australian case shows why. A 44-year-old man was jailed for over seven years after the Australian Federal Police found he had run fake "evil twin" Wi-Fi networks at Perth, Melbourne and Adelaide airports and on domestic flights. Phones auto-joined the copies, and a fake login page harvested email and social media passwords.
On the other hand, the FTC points out that most sites and apps now encrypt data in transit, so simply connecting to a legitimate network is usually safe. The risk comes from handing your credentials to the wrong page.
How to use it sensibly
- Confirm the exact network name on airport signage or the airport's website. Be suspicious of extras like "Free_Airport_WiFi_2".
- Never enter a password on a Wi-Fi login page. Real airport portals ask you to accept terms or watch an ad, not sign in with Google or Facebook.
- Turn off auto-join so your phone doesn't connect to look-alike networks on its own.
- Use a VPN such as NordVPN to keep the network from seeing which sites you visit. It won't save you from typing a password into a phishing page, though.
- Switch to mobile data for banking or anything urgent. A travel eSIM is often cheap enough to skip public Wi-Fi entirely.