Comments on: Using Free Wireless and VPNs

By: The Guy

The Guy — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 23:32:36 +0000

@Karl

Dude, the whole point of witopia’s (https://www.witopia.net/) VPN service is to mask your IP address and encrypt your traffic so you have online privacy. Beyond it being listed on their terms, I know it’s been mentioned in the press how they keep no info on your browsing, etc. They don’t market anything or look at/sell your info. Again, that’s the whole point!

AnchorFree likely does skim your info on some level because they target ads (like you mention) to pay for service, where witopia serves no ads, but charges like 40 ducats a year. I’ll pay the money for witopia and total privacy, but I see where anchorfree is a good solution for many too. That’s personal preference but, they are very different approaches.

By: Alex Conner

Alex Conner — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:14:44 +0000

I tell my clients that anything they do online where there isn’t a padlock ($browser_specific_padlock_location) that whatever they are doing could be intercepted, spoofed, etc. This is not just the case with public WiFi, even though that is a big place for it to happen.

With the new wireless configuration at http://UBCafe.com/, we employ NoCat Splash to display a warning (http://wireless.ubcafe.org/splash.html) to all of our users letting them know that this is an unencrypted connection and that their traffic can be seen by anyone on the system.

Personally, I’d recommend the following to anyone who uses the internet a lot (in general):

Install patches
Get Identity Theft Protection
Use a Firewall
Watch the Address Bar

Other than that, don’t worry about it too much…

By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 05:06:07 +0000

There’s a Firefox Plugin called Customize Google that keeps your GMail session over SSL the whole time. http://www.customizegoogle.com/

By: David Szpunar

David Szpunar — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:24:52 +0000

While I disgree with link)','caption', 'Wi-Fi Protected Access' );">WPA-PSK being more secure than link)','caption', 'Wi-Fi Protected Access' );">WPA-Enterprise at an organizational level (home is fine but it doesn’t scale), thanks for the comment! Good to know about WiTopia and company. Their personal VPN service is likely still more secure than unencrypted wireless in public locations (having marketing stats collected about you is better than some wifi attacks in my opinion!), but there are other providers out there as well. I do think I’ll keep my low-cost (although a bit complex) link)','caption', 'Wi-Fi Protected Access' );">WPA-Enterprise setup that’s done all in-house! I do see the draw for outsourcing it though, it’s not the easiest stuff to set up if you don’t already know how.

By: Karl

Karl — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 02:14:32 +0000

Anchor Free the operators of Hotspot Shield and Witopia are a giant data mining and marketing company. Of course they want you to do away with your nice secure link)','caption', 'Wi-Fi Protected Access' );">WPA with pre-shared keys and let all of your users authenticate through them.

A quote from their standard press release:

About AnchorFree

AnchorFree, the largest Hotspot media network, is a new marketing channel for brand and direct response marketers to deliver interactive, timely and targeted advertisements to laptop and mobile device users when they are away from the home or office. The AnchorFree network connects advertisers with millions of consumers in a captive, persistent manner that is highly measurable and geo-targeted to these users’ exact locations.

Great stuff if you don’t care about your privacy.