Public WiFi: A Hacker's Paradise

Sitting in your local Starbucks with a tall Mocha Frapuccino in hand, you turn on your laptop and seize the opportunity to hook up to a public free WiFi provider. They’re everywhere. Airports, cafes, hotels, and even gas stations have them. But just how safe are they?

The answer: not very. According to several reports, including those of the NY Times, public WiFi’s are a magnet for security hazards. Hackers particularly have thrown their anchors into the deep abyss of the oceanic hot spots of public wireless internet providers. Though a number of people are aware of the dangers lurking at public internet access points, most narrow it down to the mere refusal of making credit card transactions or typing in personal information.

Yet the precautions should go deeper than that.

According to a Yahoo Tech article, anything that requires an online login like Facebook or other social networking sites, as well as personal e-mail accounts are subject to exploitation by hackers. The threats intensify if you are using a public computer, since cookies are stored making the sites and logins you just used easily accessible to anyone who sits at the computer after you.

The problem lies in insufficient public internet security.

“The problem is, the really good people have written sniffer programs so that the less-sophisticated people have access to the same technology,” Michael Sellitto, a Harvard graduate student studying international security, told the NY Times. “Say a Microsoft Word document gets transmitted. The sniffer program will collect that and someone could open it up on their computer.”

Yet even your own wireless connection at home can leave one in the path of danger if not protected by a unique password.

So how can you protect yourself from becoming a victim and having your information stolen in a matter of seconds? According to the NY Times, there are several things you can do.

Create a password to safeguard your own wireless connection at home. Also make sure you have a new or updated version of an anti-virus program to further prevent hackers from invading your privacy.

Installing a specialized program, like RoboForm, meant to encrypt all personal data such as passwords is a safe and easy way to protect your data from being stolen in public places. Such programs can also be stored on USB ports creating a secondary protective barrier.

However, the safest way to protect your hardware is to simply limit your use online to websites that do not require personal data when using public WiFi.

"Connect only to the networks that you trust. Make sure that your communication is secure, disconnect the wireless when you stop using it, and maintain the list of wireless connections that you use on your laptop so that you don't accidentally connect to networks that may spring up when you're traveling,” Kiran Deshpande, president of AirTight Networks, told CNN.