How to Stay Safe in a Public Unprotected WiFi Hotspot
They sit in the coffee house. You see a sign on the wall that says “here is free wifi”. Impressive! You get your new, shiny iPad and connect it to the network. It was simple … SSID was “coffeefree wifi” and no password was required. Why don’t more people use it? There is only one man and a laptop on the other side of the room. Make yourself feel happy! Laugh at her bar and stare at her screen! See more SSID names.
You sit down and drink your capuccino and talk to your friends on Facebook … “Guess where I am! Just outside the coffee house, I drink coffee and use the iPad, surf the Internet!” that is so nice?“ Then you decide to check your email. It is on the POP3 server. Well, my dad sent me some money over the wire. Here is the reference number. I just have to give them this number and I have to get the 500 required for the books for my course. It all looks so good. What could be wrong with that?
A day or two later, your Facebook friends will complain of abusive messages from you! They also receive spam messages … messages with links to websites guaranteeing financial gain. One of your computers who is smart tells you that one of the links has tried to upload a virus to their PC! Fortunately, it was closed. You are very worried about this and decide to take a walk to clean your head. "I know let’s take Dad’s PA 500 and go shopping.” You go to the money shop to claim it, but they tell you that it was claimed two days ago by a branch near the coffee house! You feel this sinking in the pit of your stomach! Now you have to sell your iPad to pay for your books, or it will be excluded from the course if your grades suffer!
The day gets worse when you try to email Dad if you can send him more money. You can not log in to your email! This means that your password is incorrect! It has always been the same! “Mojo” - The name of your dog when you were a child! It suddenly sinks! Maybe entering someone’s open wifi network was not a good idea!
So what went wrong here and what can he do to stop it? His first mistake was using a public unencrypted WiFi hotspot. When connected to this network, all traffic in the vicinity can be “sniffed” by anyone. It can be several hundred feet. However, by efficient use of common household objects, a person can build an antenna that picks up the signal twice. A person who laughs at his coffee cannot be a criminal. Anyone with the right software - like Wirsark - can easily listen to every packet of information sent from a man’s iPad! Even if the network was encrypted, you would not be secure. If someone was legally connected to the same network, they may be hidden in your traffic.
This is an easy way to ensure that you are protected on a public WiFi network. This is done using a VPN (virtual private network). There are many providers of these services. Just go to your favorite search engine and find them. Most, if not all, operating operating systems can establish VPN connections. You can also do this with your iPhone, Android device, or iPad. What a VPN does is create your own private “tunnel” on the web. They forward all your traffic to your server. Collect the data you want and send it encrypted to you. It does not matter whether you are on a public WiFi network and whether it is protected by WiFi encryption. Between you and the VPN provider, they have a different level of encryption. It is worth investing in and publicly using a provider. It is connected to a hotel, cafe, university or anywhere else where you cannot control the router - such as a hotspot at home. Find out funny wifi names.
So it is there. My tip for security in a public WiFi hotspot # 1. Invest in a provider. Set up your phone, iPad, and Android device or laptop so that you can connect to a public WiFi hotspot as well as connect to the Internet via a VPN. You can get a membership for a few pounds a month. But here is the key! Don’t forget to turn it on when connected to public wifi hotspot!
What happened to our victim? Well, their traffic was encrypted. It uses the POP3 server to select its email. Therefore his password was encrypted. The Interceptor accessed their email account information using software such as Wire Shark, then logged into their account, read all their emails and changed their password. He then sold the account information to some criminals so that they could send spam emails through his account. Then he went to the cash store and took 500 pounds from his father!
Our victim logged into Facebook via an encrypted channel in front of the address. If he had used ‘https: //’, he would have used more defense and SSL - but hackers have also found a way to work around the so-called “man in the middle” attack. More on that in future articles. Her Facebook account was compromised. The Interceptor logged into Facebook as our victim. He changed his password and sent spam messages to all his friends. Some of them include links to phishing sites (more on this in the future)
There are many unscrupulous people who know how to use the internet for their dishonest purposes. It is up to you to take the necessary precautions to stay safe. It is a world where people can disappear in an instant. The culprit may not be in the same geographical location as you. Be safe … use a VPN … we have the best defense right now - until someone knows how to handle it!