Open Wi-Fi hotspots at coffee shops, airports and other public places are convenient but also dangerous. Anyone who is on the same wireless network (either unencrypted or with a shared password) can read the content of your e-mail or what you are surfing.
The simple rule to use public Wi-Fi safely: anything you transferred on the Internet through a public Wi-Fi is visible to others. So encrypt them whenever possible. Here is how:
1. Secure your desktop email program
If you use a desktop email program such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Windows Mail, Thunderbird or others, you must configure it to use secure connections for sending and receiving email.
Configure your email client to use POP3 or IMAP and SMTP to access your email with the “SSL”, “TLS” options. The settings may be various depend on your email service provider and the email program you use. You can find out how to setup the correspond program on the email service provider’s web site. We listed some of them bellow. Once it’s done, your emails will be encrypted when transferring over an open Wi-Fi hotspot.
Gmail:
Outlook:
AOL:
2. Secure your web-based email
To combat with email snoops, choose a Webmail system with HTTPS for the whole session. Almost all Webmail systems use HTTPS when you log in, so your password is encrypted. However, some of them switch back to HTTPafter authentication because it reduces the computational strain on the server side and makes serving advertisements easier.
That means the content of you email is still visible to anyone else who is on the same wireless network. Or even worse, someone can steal your session cookies and log in to your Webmail without using the password.
So the most important thing is to choose an email service provider uses the HTTPS connection for the whole session. As we know, Gmail uses HTTPS by default.
3. Use a VPN
By enabling the VPN function on your laptop or phone, you ensure that all of your communication is encrypted with high-strength ciphers and tunneled from the Wi-Fi hotspots. Https or not, secure email configuration or not, as all of your traffic is securely tunneled, no one sharing thesame open Wi-Fi hotspot can see a thing.
This is a secure method of accessing Internet because no matter who is also on the shared wireless network, he can’t get into your tunnel.
Such an arrangement may be slightly slower than unencrypted Web browsing and even involves a recurring fee, but the security makes it worthwhile. Additionally, if you are traveling in a country that imposes Internet censor (such as Iran or Egypt),you can tunnel your traffic back through your US-based VPN connection and reach sites as if you were from the US.
4. Paid Hotspots are not secure
Some people think that commercial hotspots that require pay-per-hour or monthly subscription fees (such as AT&T, T-Mobile) are more secure than the free public Wi-Fi because a payment and a password are involved.
In fact, most of these hotspots are unencrypted, and they employ a “captive Web portal” to prevent access to the Internet until you pay the money. Though the Web portal is delivered over HTTPS (to protect the credit card information and the password), once authentication complete all the traffic is still unencrypted on the wireless network.
As a result, you are in the same situation as you use a public Wi-Fi hotspot.Any person can still view any unencrypted traffic that you send, just by joining the same SSID wireless network.
Conclusion: Consider using a VPN service if you use the open Wi-Fi hotspots often. Use HTTPS to access any web sites (include webmail) that include important information whenever possible.
0 comments:
Post a Comment