Many people don’t realise that turning your phone’s Wi-Fi off when leaving home is crucial
Astounding technology is widely accessible in 2025, and it feels like our smartphones can do almost anything – from taking pictures, translating foreign languages to even using AI to assist in our daily lives.
But there’s one thing many of us fail to consider about our phones. When we leave the house, most of us will keep our phone’s WiFi switched on, which we don’t realise comes with significant security risks.
Switching your WiFi off on your phone when you go out helps to avoid connecting to sketchy networks, protects your personal data, and helps prevent apps and services from tracking your location, reports El Adelantado.
It makes sense to most of us to leave our phone’s Wi-Fi on all the time, so it’ll reconnect automatically when we get home. But keeping WiFi turned on means your phone is constantly searching for networks, putting your security at risk.
Your smartphone is constantly scanning and interacting with hundreds of open networks, and some of these could pose a threat to your phone’s security. Your location and personal data could end up exposed without you even realising it.
Over time, our phones collect a long list of remembered Wi-Fi networks that you’ll regularly come across as you go about your daily life – at your local coffee shops, train stations or shopping centres. This list of networks passively reveals where you go and when.
You can combat this by clearing out the saved networks on your phone and only connecting manually when you need to use Wi-Fi. This reduces the risk of your phone automatically joining unsecured or malicious networks.
And Wi-Fi isn’t the only security risk posed by smartphones – many Android devices also use Bluetooth for location tracking, meaning your phone could still be revealing your location, even when Wi-Fi is turned off.
You can check under your Location or Bluetooth settings to see which features are active on your device, in order to keep protecting your privacy, as it’s crucial to keep an eye on which apps have access to your location.
Unless an app truly needs to know where you are, it’s best to keep that information private.
Sometimes staying connected through Wi-Fi is a must, but it’s smart to use your own mobile data where you can. And staying weary of when and why we use WiFi can go a long way in keeping our devices and data protected.
