Tips to minimise travel security risks 

• Create social walls: Whether it’s your location or that selfie where your hair looks just right, criminals are more able to monitor your whereabouts via social activity and take advantage of you when you have the weakest protection.
• Be careful when you share: It’s important to not indicate publicly where or when you’ll be taking that relaxing vacation. Wait until you return home before posting; otherwise, you could leave yourself open to would-be thieves who want to know when your home will be vacant.
• Limit WiFi and Bluetooth use: Connecting to unprotected Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices can expose your personal information. You should be careful when exchanging payment information. With this in mind, make sure to update your Bluetooth and Wi-Fi history by removing previously ‘remembered’ wireless networks, like ‘cafewifi.’
• Monitor your accounts: Keep an eye out for suspicious activity in your bank account history. If you aren’t meticulous about monitoring your activity, a criminal could have access to your accounts for quite some time before you are aware.

The findings

Findings indicate that 42% from Hyderabad who went on the vacation with the intent to unplug were not completely successful in doing so. As cybercriminals are on the lookout for such opportunities, consumers need to be vigilant and take precautionary security measures to prevent exploitation of their personal information.

No intention to unplug

• 82% connect to internet while they are on vacation
• Almost three out of four people want to be unplugged on a week-long vacation if work obligations were not a factor
• 41% are not willing to leave their smartphone
• Communication with the family (62%) or being available in case of emergencies (44%) are main reasons that keep people from being unplugged

need to be vigilant

• 28% access or share sensitive information while using public WiFi
• 31% have no problem sharing vulnerable personal information, such as credit card number or log-in name/password
• 35% could not last a day on vacation without checking social media

Methodology

The research was conducted between March 18 and 29 by MSI via an online questionnaire to 1,423 people in India, aged 21-54. Global study was conducted across 13,960 consumers between the ages of 21 to 54, evenly split by gender.