For all these years I've written about anonymous browsing, VPNs, proxies, and the security these types of tools provide, I've never actually owned my own smartphone. Sure, I've played with phones from other people, read tons of tutorials and even written some myself, but I never really found much use for actually owning an internet-ready phone. Well, I finally bought one last week, and have been having a great time getting familiar with all the features.

But one thing I realized is that there is a lot of secure information shared through your phone. Things like Paypal accounts, bank accounts, private logins for all your social networks, email stuff, and the list goes on. I mean, there are even apps that are supposed to link ALL your accounts. Can you imagine if someone stole your phone? For some of these apps, you can even set it so your phone remembers your login info.

And then it all made sense.

Using packet sniffing data, you can actually intercept and use this information to access other peoples accounts.

And people use their phones on shared wifi all the time.

Sure, always as simple as some people would have you think, but for a professional identity thief, it's probably a lot easier that you would like it to be.

And the doorway to identifying and stealing your private information is your IP address.

Really.

Now I'm not that tech savvy, but using some simple commands from my laptop, I was able to find all the phones in my house connected to our wifi, as well as our computers. I could see their individual IP address, the name of the device and model, as well as the MAC address.

It took me about 10 minutes, starting from knowing nothing, to finding the software, and learning how to use it.

There is also software out there called a packet sniffer, that can actually passively search for data packets being send over the network, and can actually read them.

To make a long story short, it's really easy to figure out how to get someone's data on shared wifi.

Which is why you should be using a virtual private network for your smartphone.

Virtual private networks encrypt your data and make you invisible online. This means you can share an internet connection with other people, but not risk getting spied on, or becoming a victim of identity theft.

They're easy to install, and once installed and running you don't need to do anything to reap the benefits. After you log into the wifi, then sign into your VPN server, the VPN simply runs in the background and protects your private data.

Though you may find this a bit annoying at first - having to add one extra step each time you sign into an unsecured network, do you find it annoying to wear your seat belt when you drive a car? Is it annoying to look both ways before crossing the street? These are all safety precautions that most of the time, are not necessary to keep us safe. However, we've trained yourself to do them all the time because accidents happen, and a taking a few seconds extra can ensure our safety.