Just like the need to be vigilant and to practice good cyber hygiene on your normal data connection, you need to be especially protective of your data when using a public Wi-Fi hotspot.
In many cases, there is some level of security on the public hotspot, with many providers offering public Wi-Fi packages to businesses including features to minimize this sort of activity.
By tricking users to connect to the hotspot, the hotspot owner can have much more control over the connection, and have a much easier time snooping traffic coming from your devices.
Even if the connection is legitimate and not affected by an attacker, the hotspot may not necessarily be perfectly safe for your personal data.
They may even present network pop-ups, declaring that users have to sign in with their personal information to use the connection, as a simple form of data collection.
