With the impending completion of the Adelaide city wifi network , how secure is it to use public wifi ?
Should you do your banking on one or any financial transactions , such as shopping
These are open wifi networks , which means that traffic , your internet surfing is not encrypted , that means people ( bad guys ) can see what you are doing.
There are 3 ways you can be attacked
- There are “man in the middle attacks” where a hacker puts themself between 2 computers and intercepts or changes communication between them
- “Packet sniffers” where people use computers or mobile devices to intercept any information sent over unsecured wifi
- Fake wifi networks which masquerade as legitimate networks in order to steal information
So what do they steal ?
- Use names and passwords for online banking , social media , emails , shopping
So what should you do to prevent this?
- Make sure your antivirus and firewall are on and working
- Connect to the internet using “ public network on your computer “ which means you should not be sharing any files
- Turn off file sharing
- Make sure the websites you visit start with https in the address bar
If you want to do banking , turn off wifi , setup a hot spot with your smartphone and use its internet capabilities , this is far safer or just use your banks app from your smartphone or tablet
The same applies to internet cafes , I would not do any banking on them as they can be a hotbed of insecure browsing due to little security maintenance being done on them.
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