The cautious approach when the network is not mine

When the network is not mine, the cautious approach changes shape. Some of it gets harder. One part of it stops being possible at all.

What a borrowed network actually is

A borrowed network is any network I did not configure myself. That is a cafe, a hotel, an office guest network, a phone tethered to somebody else, a family member house I am visiting for a week. All of them share the same property from my point of view. Somebody else decides what the network sees and what it logs.

A cautious approach on a borrowed network starts with treating the network as a passive observer rather than an active enemy. I do not assume it is out to get me, but I do not tell it more than it needs.

The network sees that I am using Tor. It cannot see what I am doing inside Tor. That is the shape of the honesty I keep in front of me for the whole session.

What I still do the same as at home

I still open only Tor Browser. I still do not touch the security slider on the first visit. I still copy the address from the three at the top of this article rather than typing it. I still pick one and paste rather than trying two at once.

The muscle memory of a cautious approach travels well. The addresses do not change because I am on a different network. The browser does not change either. The comparison I do with my eyes is the same comparison.

What travels less well is the part of the approach that lives in the room. A cafe does not let me close a door.

What I change

I sit with my back to a wall. This is not paranoia, it is that a screen visible from behind is a screen anybody standing near me can read while they are queueing for coffee. A cautious approach on a borrowed network makes the screen private with geometry rather than with software.

I do not stay long. A cafe visit that lasts ten minutes is a cafe visit that only shows the network that I opened Tor for ten minutes. A cafe visit that lasts two hours shows the same but at a duration that is easier to notice. Being brief is cautious.

I do not fund an account. A cafe is a place to look, not to transact. Any step that involves a wallet waits until I am back on a network I trust more.

The one thing I do not do on a borrowed network

I do not log in. This is the hard rule. The password to the market lives in my head or in a password manager that I control, and the moment I put it into a form on a borrowed network I have handed something to a place I did not choose. The reason is not that the cafe network can read the password. The reason is that the login represents a session, and the session is what the network sees a shape of over the following minutes.

A first visit on a cafe network is a visit that ends before the login page becomes interesting. That is the entire cautious approach on a borrowed network in one sentence.

The exception is not, in practice, an exception. There is no situation where a borrowed network turns into a network I own for one login and then back to borrowed.

What I do after the visit

I close the whole browser window. I do not leave the tab open until I get home. I close it before I stand up.

I do not connect the same laptop to my home network for a few minutes after I get home before checking whether anything from the cafe session leaked. That check is easier if the session was small in the first place, which is why cautious approach on a borrowed network stays small.

If I did read anything worth remembering while I was in the cafe, I write it down on paper afterwards, not into a note that syncs to a service I do not control. Paper is a good friend on a borrowed network day.

The tempting mistake I keep almost making

The tempting mistake is to think that because Tor Browser handles the routing, the network I am on does not matter. Tor Browser handles what the network sees of the content. It does not handle what my behaviour on the network looks like as a pattern. A long careful cafe session is still a long careful cafe session, and any pattern is a pattern that can be seen by whoever is watching for patterns.

A cautious approach is not just about who is looking. It is about not being interesting to look at. A five minute read followed by walking out is not interesting. Two hours of the same Tor circuit while the coffee cup is empty is a shape.

What I would tell a friend

• If you are in a cafe and you want to look at the market, look at the market and then close the window.
• If you were going to fund or sign in today, wait until you are on a network you control.
• If the visit lasts long enough that you notice how long it has been, it has already been longer than a cautious cafe visit should be.
• If you would not read a message from your bank on that same laptop in that same seat, you should think about whether this is the right seat for this either.

Why any of this is a cautious approach at all

A cautious approach is not a claim to safety. It is an honest description of what I do to keep a visit small, forgettable and separable from the rest of my day. On a borrowed network some of that becomes harder and some of it becomes impossible, and the honest answer is to do less rather than to pretend the network is what it is not.

The market itself does not change because I am on a cafe network. The addresses at the top of this article are the same addresses I would use from home. What changes is what I let myself do once one of those addresses is open.

What this article is not. This is not a claim that any network is safe. It is a description of what I do when I am on a network I did not set up and what I do not do at all.