Russia World Cup 2018 - Scam Awareness

For those of you who will be in Russia for the 2018 World Cup, an article on Scam-Detector is worth reading to help protect yourself from travel scams.  Russia is clean, safe, and a great place to visit; but as with any major event, like the World Cup, there are those who may try to take advantage of unsuspecting tourists.

Item #20 (WiFi) in the Scam-Detector article mentions WiFi connections. I note that many WiFi connections in Russia are not encrypted at all, while others use some encryption method that is not always compatible with your device. For some reason St. Petersburg seems to have a lot of open / unencrypted wiFi connections. Maybe because it is a tourist area.

When WiFi is encrypted, most connections seem to be using WPA2, which is good.

While visiting Russia disable Wi-Fi when it is not needed, or at least turn off automatic connections to Wi-Fi networks and enable the "always use a secure connection" option on device settings. Be sure that you always connect through a VPN. (Of course, I recommend this as a regular practice regardless of where you are.)

Even those who aren't traveling to Russia will likely face an increased security risk from the World Cup, thanks to the legions of scammers and malware writers who will be using the hype of the event to lure in users. Keep an eye out for suspicious emails and offers related to the tournament, and don't download or install any 'codecs' served up by untrusted streaming sites.