Beware free and open wi-fi access points

In this wonderfully connected world, we are all constantly on the internet in one form or another. PC's, Laptops, tablets, mobile phones, and other gizmos, all connected up. 

And nowadays we are all using wi-fi as our primary means to connect. At home, office, hotel, out in the city, our devices are constantly searching for a wi-fi signal so we can connect up to the internet. 

But what happens when we travel to foreign climes. We switch our 3G or cellular data off so as not to incur astronomical bills on our phones and tablets. So we need wi-fi more than ever to connect. Most hotels now provide wi-fi, free or paid, and we connect to that. But often we are in cafes, in the town square and we need wi-fi. The urge to check into Facebook or send an email is overwhelming. 

So what do we do? Search for an open wi-fi signal. If you are lucky, you find a random wifi network which is unsecured. You connect to it, thanking the universe for free wi-fi.

You phone/laptop/tablet goes into internet mode. facebook updates, emails whizzing in and out,  application updates etc all happen within seconds.

All great, right? Well in short the answer is NO.

You have no idea who is managing the wi-fi access point you just connected to. This can be a very bad thing. Let me explain:

One of our clients recently came back from a trip to India, and since then has been getting bouncebacks from random email addresses. On checking her laptop, all was OK. Further checking at the email provider showed that a connection from India was using her details to log in and send out spam. 

So it seems that she connected to a free wifi hotspot somewhere. All her web traffic got logged by that hotspot provider. They then used her details to hack into her accounts. Luckily in this case it was only emails, but it could have been her banking credentials that were siphoned off.
We changed her password at the email provider and the problem was resolved.

So, a word of warning. Connecting to a free open wi-fi is not as safe as you would think so.
Remember on mobile devices, you have all these applications running in the background and they will connect and send login details without you realising. 

Be careful out there.