News

Public wifi access is a growing trend.  In the last two years, the number of people accessing wifi hotspots in the UK grew from 700,000 to almost 2.5 million. Pubs, bars, cafes, airports, hotels and other public spaces are increasingly offering free or fee-based wifi service as a standard convenience. 

But how safe are these hotspots we’ve come to expect at places like Starbucks and Costa’s Coffee?

The answer might make you choke on your latte. 

Statistics suggest that close to one third of all hotspots are unsecured.  Worse, some innocent-seeming public connections are actually “rogues”: hotspots set up by hackers and designed to look like legitimate services. Next time you’re at Costa’s, don’t assume that the network labelled “CostasWifi” is the necessarily the café’s service. It could be a misleading tactic designed to lure you into signing on and handing your private information over to the network’s owner.

Always play it safe when using a public network:

• Ask an employee for the name of the wifi network they provide so that you don’t mistakenly hop onto a rogue hotspot.

• Avoid hotspots labelled “Free WiFi.” They are likely to be bait traps set by hackers.

• Don’t do your shopping or banking on a public network, and don’t transmit sensitive information. Try to limit your activities to things like socialising or catching up on the news.

• If you know you’ll be connecting to hotspots from your laptop or phone, don’t store critical data on them. Leave important information at home on a memory stick or hard drive.

•  Keep your wifi and Bluetooth turned off when you’re not using them. 

• Make sure all software is up-to-date on your mobile devices and laptops, including your antivirus software and spyware protection.

You were warned.