Recently in Brazil we had discussions about this theme, specially during the protests in June, where people couldn't use accordingly the 3G signal due to the busy services. So in order to workaround the problem, people participating in the parede were asking to the residents living around where the parede was taking place to leave open the their Wifi networks on the streets, homes or companies so that people could use the internet easily.
We all agree that it would be much easier to spread the internet around the city, so wherever you go you would have internet access and in a few seconds you would be connected.
However for both sides, people that leave the wifi network open without any protection and people that connect to an open wifi network disregarding the source might be in dangerous situation.
=> Users that connect to open wifi networks - a very important information that every user needs to know (even though the wifi networks with password) is that all information being transferred in the network might be captured by another computer in the network if the information is not encrypted. So if you don't know how safe the network connection is, avoid having access to the e-mail or any other sensitive personal information that might not be encrypted, otherwise someone else might be capturing all information transferred in the network and you don't have the slightest idea.
An alternative to this it is to use a VPN (Virtual Private Network), once you have stablished a connection to a wifi network, you open another connection using this protocol to a sever that this server will provide a secure connection service in this network.
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| Common Wireless Networks |
=> Users that provide open Wifi network - once anyone can connect to this open wifi network, anyone with bad intention can also act for illicit purposes, such as child pornography, ilegal downloads, etc., the user provider will not be able to tell who did this because there will be no information about the devices which have connected to the network.
An alternative to this, do:
- Never provide a Wifi network without password, there is no enough reason no to put a password.
- Don't provide easy and guessable passwords which anyone can try and possibly connect.
- Change this password frequently, so someone that have connected a time ago will ask you again for the new password and thus you will filter who is connecting in your network.
Those recommendations are the basic steps to follow in your Wifi network at home on in your company.
