On Aug 24, 2014, at 4:28 PM, Pen Helm wrote: > Is it safe to use a wi-fi hotspot I know nothing about?
It depends on a few things: (1) If you need a password to get into the hotspot, it's probably pretty secure because this usually means all the traffic is encrypted. If it's a truly open hotspot with no password, then that means the traffic may not be unencrypted. Either way, you can check for encryption by holding down the option key while hitting the WiFi fan in the menu bar. If it doesn't say something like Security: WPA2 Personal, then your traffic is open to anyone with a packet sniffer. (2) It also depends on what you are doing. Many sites — Gmail, Facebook, AOL and all banks — run with encrypted sessions in your browser, If the browser session is encrypted, then nobody can eavesdrop, even if the local WiFi is unsafe. Look for the https lock in your browser to make sure. I pay for a VPN service, and I always use it when I'm on public WiFi, just in case. With a VPN connection, nobody can peek at your session. It only costs about $15 per year, and has the added bonus of letting me watch in-market baseball games from MLB.com and stream BBC content straight from London.
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