How do enter a public wifi safe, use VPN-app?

You need to find a VPN service. Try a Google search for "vpn services free"

And you can search for paid VPN services Google "vpn services"

The VPN service will give you instructions on how to use their service.

Setting up your own VPN service on a home computer is a bit (actually a lot) more complicated, but mostly because getting something like OpenVPN setup on a Mac is not easy, and dealing with making your home VPN server visible through your router is more complexity, and finally, most home broadband connections have a rather slow out-bound speed, so you setting up your own home VPN server may limit you to somewhere between 1-5 megabits/second speeds based on what you home ISP broadband out-bound speed is.

Using a VPN service for general Internet access (as opposed to accessing a corporate network is pointless. Paying for a VPN service to access the Internet is just plain stupid. At best, the traffic is only secure from your machine to the egress point from the VPN provider. it still travels over the public Internet after it hits the egress point, at which point it is just as exposed as it would be if you connected to a public WiFi hotspot with no VPN.

At worst, the VPN provider has the ability to sniff any unencrypted (e.g. non SSL traffic) coming from your machine and traveling over their network, making you MORE exposed than if you didn't use their service.

The only legitimate use for a VPN is to access a private, secure network. Not that I do not consider using a VPN to make yourself appear to originate in a different country so that you can illegally access things like streaming content, or using a VPN in an attempt to hide activity from legal monitoring by governments, employers, etc. legitimate.

Reply to KiltedTim

I mildly disagree. If the goal is to keep anyone using the same public unsecured WiFi access point in a coffee shop, or similar free WiFi access point, then using a VPN that turns off all local Access, a VPN can be useful.

If the VPN client does NOT redirect all open ports into the VPN, then an open ports (file sharing, screen sharing, remote login, etc...) would be accessible from other users sharing the public WiFi access point (they still have to get past username/password, but they are exposed if the VPN client allows local access). But any remote connection would not be accessible to the local WiFi users, similar to being at home, where no one outside your home can view your WiFi traffic, but the ISP and beyond would be the internet, no different from the VPN server egress point.

And if the VPN service or their ISP is sniffing your traffic, then that is no different from your own ISP sniffing your traffic. The only traffic that is secure is end-to-end encrypted between you and the site you are talking to (generally an SSL/TLS connection; also know as an HTTPS connection).

The other use of a VPN is accessing services that are region limited, such as services you normally use at home, but you want to access them while traveling internationally.

NOTE: The company I work for does require I use their VPN service when I access my work systems from a remote location (such as home or when traveling). And since they then have a proxy server for accessing stuff outside of work, I can use the company's VPN at a public WiFi hotspot as long as I do not object to the company sniffing my non-SSL/TLS non-work traffic.

I understand your point, but it doesn't really make you any more secure than not using one. The only way it would have any real impact would be if you were silly enough to connect to a rogue access point. A fake network, being created by someone within range designed to make it seem like you were connecting to a legitimate network and you were passing sensitive information in clear text.

Accessing region limited services by using a VPN to make it appear you are in a region where the content is available would be a violation of the TOS for the service you're accessing (if it were not, the content would be available to you without the need to game the system) and possibly illegal.

If the VPN service, it is somewhat different from your ISP doing so as you are presumably paying them for privacy, which you're not getting. Since most a significant percentage of the VPN "services" out there are designed to facilitate questionable or downright illegal activity, I find little reason to believe they should be trusted with "secure" data transmission.

Reply to KiltedTim

But when using a public WiFi hotspot how do you insure it is not compromised and is actually a rogue access point?

The VPN would offer protection from a rogue hotspot.

Except for the rouge hotpot, your entire argument is that surfing from home vs a public WiFi hotspot vs via a commercial VPN are identical, as eventually all of that traffic ends up on the Internet.

There are paid VPN services that are reliable businesses. There is even one <https://www.proxpn.com/twit/index.php> that does not even keep any logs that can be obtained via court-order. Yes governments can setup packet capture at their egress point, but that is still not different from packet capture when it leaves your home, or your ISP.

My basic argument is that the opportunistic intruder can setup business in a public WiFi hotspot location much easier than it can via your ISP or a VPN service. There is insured traffic, and an assumption there is public WiFi, such that they can sit an wait, or even insert a rogue access point and be likely to catch someone.

Firebox has 48 pages of FREE VPN "Add-ons" to use w/their browserfor you to check out.

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