Survey claims 32 percent of UK people can’t identify if a Wi-Fi network is secure

A new “nationally representative” survey of 3,000 UK adults, which was conducted by Censuswide during July 2026, has reported that 32% of respondents were not confident they could identify a secure public Wi-Fi network from a fake (spoofed) one. On the flip side, 73% of men did feel confident identifying secure Wi-Fi, compared with 64% of women.

The survey, which was commissioned by Compare the Market, also found there was an age gap, with 39% of those aged 55 and over not being confident they could tell whether a Wi-Fi network was secure. By comparison, 18 to 24-year-olds are the most confident group at 80%.

Sadly quite a few people still make the mistake of assuming that public Wi-Fi networks (e.g. airports, hotels and cafes) are all safe and secure, even though this might not always be the case. If you’re not careful then you could end up connecting to a hotspot that’s been hijacked or even deliberately setup (spoofed SSID) to fool you.

The survey goes on to highlight how 20% of respondents took no precautions at all before joining a public Wi-Fi network, with 16% saying they wouldn’t know what to look for when deciding whether a network was suspicious. But 21% did at least use a Virtual Private Network (VPN), although this is NOT a total security blanket for your device (having a good firewall and anti-virus/malware shield is advisable).

When asked what warning signs respondents would recognise for an unsafe Wi-Fi connection, the most commonly identified one was a pop-up asking for personal information (36%), followed closely by spelling mistakes (35%) and a network requiring no password (34%). The catch being that pop-ups asking for personal details via a sign-up form are still quite common among even legitimate Wi-Fi networks.

The survey advises people to always confirm the Wi-Fi name (SSID) with whoever operates the network before connecting, as well as to consider switching off the automatic connection feature for unfamiliar networks, use a VPN, check for HTTPS (i.e. if you’re asked to enter personal details then make sure the page has a secure HTTPS connection) and avoid making financial transactions over public networks if possible.

However, the best tip is probably to forget about public Wi-Fi and stick to using Mobile Broadband connectivity instead, where viable. Modern 4G and 5G mobile broadband services are frequently lot better than public Wi-Fi, although you do need to keep an eye on your data usage and signal/performance quality does seem to vary like the wind.

Finally, we’d probably avoid connecting to Wi-Fi networks using standards older than Wi-Fi 6 if you can help it, just because there are plenty of vulnerabilities that now exist in older kit. Many organisations also fail to patch the firmware, often even when updates are available.