Free Public WiFi Often Too Good To Be True; Beware of Hackers
It's too bad that travelers need another memo on this, but apparently that expression about the demographics of suckers contains more than a grain of truth. Apparently people have been carelessly logging onto insecure wireless networks, only to have their personal information and web history found out, of course.
[Silicon Valley-based AirTight Networks] checked the Wi-Fi networks at 27 airports 20 in the U.S., five in Asia and two in Europe and the results were not good... Everywhere they looked, they found fake Wi-Fi hot spots set up by hackers phishing for suckers and there were plenty of suckers to be had. 'We found a lot of people using insecure Wi-Fi,' says AirTight investigator Rick Farina, 'and people engaged in all sort of dangerous activity checking their e-mail, doing their banking, buying stock. These are not the kinds of thing you want to be doing on public Wi-Fi.'
The study even found that people were logging up into fake peer-to-peer networks that aren't hotspots at all, which is some seriously risky behavior typical of those desperate to logon.
Even if you're using real networks, just regular, open networks, that's still a potential problem. Although it's trivial for a hacker to sit two seats over from you and inspect everything sent by your laptop, it can be done as the protocol for a WEP-enabled network was cracked years ago and can now be broken into within a few minutes.
Instead, the safe way to go is with a Virtual Private Network like AlwaysVPN or HotSpot Shield since anything that you do online is potentially compromising. Passwords are being sent over the air, personal information is being shared, etc. So you should get in the habit of using your VPN for each and every mundane task you do, at least on public networks.
Related Stories:
· Wireless Cybercriminals Target Clueless Vacationers [Fox News]
· Wifi Coverage [Jaunted]
· Travel Tips Coverage [Jaunted]
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