Do you lurk in the shadows at night in your neighbourhood, looking for a neighbour who forgot to secure his Wi-Fi with a password? When times are rough and the need for internet is desperate, anything is possible.

At least the Wifi at the Wimpy or Mugg & Bean is free AND legal. But even this Wi-Fi might not be the best option.

Using Wi-Fi in itself isn’t the actual problem – it depends on what you do with it.

Public Wi-Fi hotspots are shared with other people. This means anyone, like you, with access to the same hot spot, can technically access your data and monitor your online activity

And you don’t need to be a hacker to be able to do this. Anyone with access to the right software, like Firesheep, can become an instant cybercriminal if he wants to.

In September 2014 Finn Steglich from German company SySS set up a test Wi-Fi access point in London’s financial district. The experiment was attempted to establish how many people would willingly connect to a completely insecure and unknown device. The results were unsettling.

Never conduct any bank transactions or financial business on an open Wi-Fi connection. Not even online shopping – even if you’re panicking you’ll miss Takelot’s daily deal.

Before you use any Wifi hotspot, make sure it’s the establishment’s official spot. cybercriminals set up Wifi hot spots with copies of Twitter, Facebook, etc. to encourage unsuspecting users to log on and thereby provide their login info. Using the same password for multiple websites makes it even easier for them to access other websites with more of your personal information.

There are ways to use Wifi without putting yourself at risk. Kaspersky has a few suggestions.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 11th, 2019 at 11:30 am and is filed under Connectivity, News, Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.