As one who has used public wireless in airports, coffee houses, libraries, and elsewhere, I found this article particularly interesting.
| Public Wireless, or its Evil Twin?
The next time you’re in an airport, train station, bus station, coffee house, or other public place and decide to “jack in” to the Internet, you might well be exposing yourself to identity thieves — or worse. Here’s how it works: the girl across from you in the airport coffee shop has a laptop in her briefcase that’s set as an ‘access point’, or a ‘WiFi hotspot’. She’s even given the access point a legitimate-sounding ID, say, something like “Free Airport WiFi”. You power up your own laptop, quickly browse for available networks, see “Free Airport WiFi”, note that it’s unsecured but ignoring that, you connect. On connecting, her computer promptly proxies your access to the web and begins feeding your laptop with look-a-like pages for your banks, email access portals, or other sites. She’s recording everything that passes through her access point. She’s an “evil twin”. |
I don’t understand how it can be done. But that doesn’t change that reality, does it?
If you use public wireless, you’d be well served to click the link to read the full article. It includes some safety tips and precautions.