Nuh uh. Open hotspots is one of the great things about the internet, and
from time to time everyone needs one - sometimes in the middle of the
night or during holidays when lobbies with keys posted aren't available.
Open hotspots are also a good way to maintain anonymity for dissidents,
whistle-blowers, LGBT who are not "out", etc. When I have my own
routers, I often run them open for all these reasons, and I always will.
I sometimes educate family and friends about PGP, and one of these days
I will run a Tor node as well, with all the censor-circumvention tools
available. The more that censors and anti-anonymity Orwellianists don't
like it, the more everybody should do it.
I don't give .001% of a damn whether actual criminals use hotspots or
anything else, in exactly the same ways I don't give .001% of a damn if
they use guns, cars, roads, kitchen knives - or anything else.
Instead of desiring safety over the animating quest for freedom, why
don't you suggest educating people to use https? As it is, the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) recently reported that
https use is up to 40%, IIRC.
- Vara
On 3/20/2017 12:29 PM, Victor Odhner wrote:
I’m really annoyed that so many companies offer open WIFI when it
would be so easy to secure those hot spots.
Restaurants, hotels, and the waiting rooms of auto dealerships are
almost 100% open.
I am not one to say “there ought to be a law” because we have too many
doggone laws, and I’m not that into a lot of demonstrating and
yelling. But I would love to help educate companies on why they should
secure their routers.
If I were a progressive type, I’d suggest putting stickers on those
venues saying:
We don’t have passwords on our WIFI
because OUR WIFI (and YOUR passwords)
should be available to everybody
with no effort!
But being more right-wing, I’d much rather recognize that they’d be
happy to do the right thing if we could explain it to the right people.
I’ve repeatedly thanked the mechanic shop I use (C&R Tire on Tatum)
because they have a key posted and I can feel sort of safe going
online while I wait for an oil change. But all the places that have
open routers are corporate owned so it does no good to gripe to the
folks behind the desk.
Any ideas on this?
Thanks,
Victor
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