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Airport Experiment Shows That People Recklessly Connect To Any Free Wi-Fi Spot (softpedia.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Avast carried out a curious experiment at the Barcelona Mobile World Congress. They've set up 3 public Wi-Fi spots at the local airport and waited to see how many users would connect. In just 4 hours, more than 2,000 users used the free hotspots, despite the fact that they knew nothing about the WiFi network, if it was safe, or who was running it. Researchers randomly logged some traffic stats just to prove a point about how easy is to hack users on a public WiFi network. They also recommended using a mobile VPN app when navigating the Web via public WiFi.
Or do their devices automatically do it for them?
Always assume all networks are insecure. You're always correct.
The bigger question is, why shouldn't it be safe to connect to any random Wifi hotspot? Literally everything should be using https by now, SSL certs are even available for free, so there's no excuse not to. I often connect to public Wifi hotspots (and use a VPN since I know that everything is *not* secured with SSL) and there's really no other option (other than "never use public wifi hotspots") since there is no way to know whether the "Starbucks" or "Starbucks - SFO" or "Starbucks - Public" SSID is the legitimate one.
People would still take candy from strangers if we didn't drill it into them from a young age. Stupidity isn't limited to Wifi, it pervades everything people do.
This "drilling" does very little to actually stop abductions. First off, most abductions are not strangers but rather someone they already know. Secondly, they've done experiments and kids will readily go with someone with a puppy/kitten if they tell them they have more in the back of their van.
The "don't talk to strangers" is completely silly. The one safety tip I try to teach my kids is that if they get lost to immediately walk up to the first stranger they see and ask for help. Don't wait for a stranger to come to you. If you pick the stranger then the odds of picking a bad person are slim to none but if they pick you then the odds of them being a bad person are significantly higher.