BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) –  More than 39 million Americans hitting the road this holiday weekend, and with that comes a warning from Cyber Security Experts.

It’s officially the busiest time to travel. Whether you’re hitting the road by car or plane, cyber security experts want you to think about not only the security of your home, but the security on your phone.

Cyber Expert Arun Vishwanath said, “Realize that your privacy includes where you are and where you’re going, all of these things could potentially be stolen and compromised.”

The issue comes to connecting: when traveling many of us look to protecting our data by turning to WIFI.

Vishwanath said, “One of the things they don’t think about is, when they connect on the road they’re usually connecting on public networks and what they don’t realize is these public networks are not necessarily secure.”

But choosing that Public Wifi source could be inviting hackers to steal your information. Vishwanath said, “When you’re on the road, and you go into a cafe for instance, and you go on a public network, most of these networks are not secure and your phones are going to automatically connect.” So take note, there are only certain encrypted websites that are guaranteed to be safe.”

Vishwanath said, “So you only want to go to those pages that have encrypted transmissions, that’s the first thing you want to do.”

Experts want you to educate yourself about VPNs, or virtual private networks. These are apps you can download on your phone to protect your data.

“So if you’re accessing a page that’s not secure or your company networks when your on the road or your banking information, having a VPN is a necessary layer of protection.”

Most of the apps will cost you a small fee.

And of course you can always stick to using your cellular data for secure transactions.