🟣 Lesson 004: Locking Your Mac’s Digital Doors 🔐

On your trusted home network, your Mac is relatively safe. But on public Wi-Fi (at a café, airport, or hotel), your device is exposed to countless other users and potential threats. Without a firewall, it’s like leaving your front door unlocked—an open invitation for automated scans to probe your system for weaknesses.

Your Mac has a built-in Firewall that acts as a digital gatekeeper. Turning it on is like locking that front door. It won’t make your Mac invisible—your device is still on the network—but it blocks unsolicited incoming connections, making you a much harder target for common network scans.

🎥 Video guide

📖 How to

• Click the Apple menu and open System Settings.
• Select Network in the sidebar.
• Click on Firewall and flip the switch to On.

A firewall is essential for blocking incoming probes, but the single biggest danger on public Wi-Fi is someone eavesdropping on your data as it leaves your device. The firewall doesn't protect against that.

For this reason, the most important tool for public Wi-Fi is a reputable VPN. A VPN creates a private, encrypted tunnel for all your internet activity, making it unreadable to anyone else on the network. Think of it this way: The firewall is your seatbelt. A VPN is your airbags (e.g Mullvad). You need both to be truly safe on an untrusted network. 

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