If you use your Laptop computer at the local coffee shop, in a hotel while traveling, or at any location where you expect your online privacy at risk, you may want to consider some extra steps to protect your electronic mail and Web browsing behavior from those nosy prying eyes.

Using your computer in the above-mentioned places allows at least everyone with administrator-access to the local router to see what sites you visited. In case you aren't reading your email through an SSL connection, it's also not too hard to capture what you read and write; and no, it doesn't matter if you use are using a Web browser or an email client application to access you email account.

However, if you have a hackable router at home and it is also accessible through a publicly routable IP address, you are in luck and with only a little time and effort, you can use your home-router as a secure proxy when you are on the road. The idea is to have your Laptop connect securely to your router at home; meaning, whenever your Laptop needs to request information from a resource on the Internet (DNS-Domain Name Service, HTTP-Websites, IMAP/POP3 Email, etc.) it encrypts the request and sends it to your router at home. The router decrypts the request, sends it on to the intended destination, and awaits the response. Eventually, the router will return the response to your Laptop, it is again encrypted, this time by the home-router, and decrypted on arrival at your Laptop. For those nosy prying eyes, all this will look like a long https connection, with undecipherable content. Sounds good? OK then let's make it happen.