You’re out on the road, whether for the day or the week. You pull into a coffee shop to take a break and our new inclination is to check email or surf the web.
Later that evening, you check into your hotel and again settle in to check email and surf the web. After all, theres free wifi!
But public wifi isn’t free!
However, there are dangers to public wifi that we can’t ignore. But it doesn’t have to mean that you drop using it forever. With a few keys under your belt, you can continue to use it safely and effectively.
A few years ago, I was vacationing in Upstate New York. I had stopped into a hotel near Lake Placid after driving for hours. My first inclination at the hotel room was to check email.
After logging into the hotel’s network, I noticed something peculiar – I was seeing popups and getting redirected to different sites for a brief moment and then finally redirected to Yahoo mail where I logged in and checked mail. I thought nothing of it afterall, I was at a hotel chain that has locations all over North America.
Well after returning home and getting back to work a few weeks later I noticed something, I hadn’t received a single email from my Yahoo account in a long time. Infact, my Blackberry had the last message received as 3 weeks earlier!
Upon investigating it turns out that someone had accessed my account and had setup mail forwarding to a random address and there was nothing I could do about it. Who knows what personal information was divulged or opportunities lost.
I was able to trace back and realized that I stopped getting emails at the same time I was in Lake Placid that week and that someone must have been reading the keystrokes that I had been typing and therefore was able to take my password. I’m just glad I didn’t do my banking at that hotel!
This is known as a “man in the middle” attack. This is where someone sits between your computer and the internet reading everything you type and send. Its a very common attack and completely undetectable.
After reflecting on the situation, I learned the following things:
- The police can’t help you. I went to my local police station once I learned about it and they said that they couldn’t help me because my email was a Yahoo.com email and I live in Canada so I’m outside of their jurisdiction. Unfortunately, law enforcement agencies are not equipped to handle any of the major cyber attacks that you may have heard in the news recently as its very difficult to find out who the persons responsible are.
- Even strong passwords can’t help you. So you’ve done the right thing and come up with a crazy long password that follows all the rules we lay out for good strong passwords, well guess what, with a man in the middle attack you would be easily handing over your password no differently than handing over the keys to your car to a guy in a ski mask who promises to bring it back – no chance! What I would do is to try and log in to your email from home or work where you know the wifi is safe place and ensure that you “stay logged in” and that way you don’t need to type in your password when you get to Starbucks.
- Don’t do your banking or any sensitive transactions (even online shopping) anywhere but in places you know are safe such as at home, the office or at a friends place. You would never ask a random stranger to watch your credit card while you go to the bathroom and yet while you entrust the site you are shopping from or checking your bank balance from, you again don’t know who’s listening in. Only do surfing that doesn’t require handing out personal or sensitive information.
- Use your phones data plan. Ok so there may be times where you really need to do something really sensitive like a banking transaction. Well instead of connecting to the coffee shop wifi, what about temporarily connecting to your phone and doing the transaction and then disconnecting and going back to the coffee shop wifi? Who says you need to be connected to only one connection?
- Can it wait till you get home? Ask yourself if you really need to check email or make that transfer? Can it wait a few hours until you get home?
Well there you have it, 5 tools to help you navigate safer through the world of public wifi. You don’t have to be scared of it, just be aware of what you’re doing online.
Until next time keep practicing the art of the tech-fu warrior!
