VPN on Public Wi-Fi: What's Actually Protected?

Logosofia no Dia a Dia · Aug 26, 2026 · 25m

For years, the conventional wisdom has been clear: always use a VPN on public Wi-Fi. But that advice crystallized around 2010, when Firesheep made session hijacking a point-and-click sport and HTTPS covered barely 30% of traffic. The threat model has been completely rebuilt since — client isolation, near-universal HTTPS, and HSTS preloading now protect most connections before the VPN even enters the picture. So what's actually left for a VPN to protect? In this episode, we conduct a technical audit of the VPN-on-public-Wi-Fi advice, examining the three residual gaps that VPNs still close…