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Ask HN: Do you use your phone as hotel/free WiFi condom for laptops?

While we try our best to lock down our laptop, close open ports, run littlesnitch, ufw but it is always an unease to connect them directly to an public wifi, worrying about some 0day that allow someone in local lan to hack it.

What I sometimes do is to use my phone connecting to the free wifi and simultaneously hotspotting it to my laptop - It feels better to have something in between blocking random nmap scans.

Anyone else doing this? Is there other tricks you do?

( 5 comments | 2 points | on HN )
Re:Ask HN: Do you use your phone as hotel/free WiFi condom f... by tantalor on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @10:55PM (#46065416)
I think the word you're looking for is prophylactic.
Re:Ask HN: Do you use your phone as hotel/free WiFi condom f... by ebfe1 on Thursday November 27, 2025 @04:51AM (#46067591)
TIL! Thank you!
Re:Ask HN: Do you use your phone as hotel/free WiFi condom f... by toomuchtodo on Wednesday November 26, 2025 @11:01PM (#46065462)
I use a Glinet travel router.
Re:Ask HN: Do you use your phone as hotel/free WiFi condom f... by ebfe1 on Thursday November 27, 2025 @04:52AM (#46067594)
I will look into that, thanks for the recommendation!
Re:Ask HN: Do you use your phone as hotel/free WiFi condom f... by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF on Thursday November 27, 2025 @12:32AM (#46066018)
Nah, never done that. It's hard enough to find a place to charge one or the other.