Retail investors have become remarkably sophisticated in a short space of time.
They research earnings calls, track macro indicators, compare brokerage fee structures, and monitor their portfolios in real time from mobile devices.
Yet there is one aspect of online investing that most people still treat as an afterthought: the security and privacy of the connection through which all of that activity flows.
It is not a niche concern. According to the FINRA Foundation’s 2024 National Financial Capability Study, just over a third of US adults now hold investments outside of retirement accounts.
That is a substantial portion of the population actively managing real money through online platforms — and doing so, in many cases, from home networks, hotel connections, or shared public Wi-Fi that offers little in the way of protection.
A threat that regulators are taking seriously
The risks here are not theoretical. FINRA has formally flagged brokerage account takeovers as a rising and increasingly sophisticated threat, noting a significant uptick in incidents where criminals use stolen credentials — usernames, passwords, or intercepted authentication codes — to gain unauthorised access to investor accounts.
The consequences range from fraudulent trades placed without the account holder’s knowledge to the outright transfer of funds.
The same FINRA Foundation study found that investor concern about fraud is growing alongside the threat itself: 37% of investors now report being worried about losing money to investment fraud, up from 31% in 2021.
That shift reflects a realistic reassessment of the environment — one where the convenience of online access comes with exposure that too few investors actively manage.
Encrypted connections: from niche to necessary
One of the more practical responses to this environment is the use of a VPN, which routes internet traffic through an encrypted tunnel, masking both your activity and your IP address from anyone monitoring the network — whether that is a bad actor on a shared connection or a third-party analytics provider logging browsing behaviour on a financial platform.
It does not replace strong passwords or two-factor authentication, but it adds a meaningful and often overlooked layer of protection at the network level.
This matters particularly for investors who access their accounts from outside the home — while travelling, during work hours on corporate networks, or from any environment where the underlying connection cannot be verified.
The encryption a VPN provides ensures that login credentials and session data are not exposed in transit, even on networks that offer no security of their own.
The quieter privacy problem
Beyond the immediate risk of account compromise, there is a subtler privacy issue that active investors are increasingly thinking about: the data trail that online research and trading activity generates.
Financial platforms, like most commercial websites, collect detailed information about user behaviour — which assets are viewed, how long is spent on specific pages, what search terms are used.
This data is routinely shared with third-party analytics and advertising networks.
For an investor conducting research into a position they intend to take, that browsing pattern is commercially sensitive information.
A VPN limits the visibility of that activity at the network level, reducing the amount of data that can be harvested and profiled without your awareness.
A baseline worth establishing
Institutional traders have always had connection security built into their infrastructure as a matter of course.
For retail investors, it has historically been optional — something enthusiasts adopt rather than a standard part of the toolkit.
That distinction is becoming harder to defend as the threats grow more organised, and the financial stakes of online investing continue to rise.
Reviewing your investment security setup — including the tools and platforms you use — is as relevant as reviewing your portfolio allocation.
The checklist most investors run before placing a trade covers market conditions, position sizing, and execution timing.
Adding the question of how that trade is being made — and whether the connection carrying it is adequately protected — is a straightforward extension of the same due diligence mindset that serious investors already apply everywhere else.
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