Study: Wi-Fi users Still Don't Encrypt

Shackleford writes "SecurityFocus has an article saying that two days of electronic eavesdropping at the 802.11 Planet Expo in Boston last week sniffed out more evidence that most Wi-Fi users still aren't securing their networks. Security vendor AirDefense set up two of its commercial 'AirDefense Guard' sensors at opposite corners of the exhibit hall at the Boston World Trade Center, the site of the conference, and for two days analyzed the traffic flowing between conference-goers and 141 unencrypted access points set up by the conference for public use, and by vendors on the floor. What they found was that users checking their e-mail through unencrypted POP connections vastly outnumbered those using a VPN or another encrypted tunnel. Only three percent of e-mail downloads were encrypted on the first day of the conference, 12 percent on the second day."

Comments

Re:How can they tell?

[Violet Null]

Not only did you not read the article, you apparently didn't read the blurb at the top of the page, which mentions that the access points set up by various vendors were unencrypted; ie, they were for public use.

Re:whoaaa.. checking email unencrypted..

[The Real Programmer]

Nor do you apparently care about what english looks like. Yes, we take into consideration that some people, like you, are idiots and a danger to whatever security systems we implement.