Working from a coffee shop is a good way to change your day to day working experience. Many people do it. Many people also take meetings in coffee shops or study there with friends. You can see where I am going with that. Are coffee stores wi-fi safe to connect to. This article will not be limited to coffee shops but they are one of the best examples in my opinion for public Wi-Fi usage.
I will split the explanation into two different categories. Let’s call them Cat. 1, Cat. 2 and Cat. 3
Cat. 1 will be about when you are sitting and using the wifi in the coffee shops, public libraries, train stations or public wifi in general. So, let’s suppose that you go to meet with some friends in your favourite coffee store. You arrive early, so you decide to do some homework or some work. You take your laptop out go and ask for the wifi password if they have one (may be it is an open network) and you connect. Oh and one more thing … in some country data is still expensive so people connect their phones to the public network as well.
What can go wrong? Well several things actually. A hacker can sniff your traffic and start collecting information. What types of information can be intercepted? He/she can see the websites you are visiting, what pictures you are looking at and if you login in to unsecure website they can probably still your password and login. This is one vector for the hacker to attack you. There are several other ways but that is a separate article for a different category. If you are interested stay tuned and I will put a link here with a demo (article plus a video demo).
Cat. 2 will be about connecting to open networks on random places. That sounds strange but people can’t miss on a bargen to connect to a free wifi. Some people do that even if they have enough data on their phone. By connecting to some random network you never know who is on that network.
Cat. 3 – People who have their wifi on all the time. This is I think one of the most common things people do. They go out from their homes and still have the wifi on their phones turned on. So what’s the problem with that? May be some battery drainage? Well the battery problem is not your biggest concern. While you are walking or sitting on a park bench your phone is always searching for previously connected networks. When it finds one it will connect automatically because you already connected to that network in the past. So in the end you are sitting in the park having a good time while someone can attack you without you even thinking about it.
If you want to check how to prevent some of the things mentioned above you can check my tips for staying safe on a public wifi network.
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Photo by Bernard Hermant on Unsplash