AsiaLIFE

The other day I was enjoying my coffee and happily surfing the Internet provided free with my drink. I looked around and noticed the place was full of people doing exactly the same as me – coffee and Internet. It has become a habit in the Penh. Then it struck me. This would be a gold mine for a sniffer – a person who collects data (such as passwords, conversations) off the network.

This can be done for good or not so good purposes. In the case of your personal information, it’s likely to be ugly. Wireless network connections work in the same way as radio broadcasting, but at a lower and unlicensed frequency. It’s convenient but anyone else on the network can easily ‘sniff’ the data being broadcasted and get all your usernames, passwords or conversations.

Why would someone do that?

Statistics show that a lot of hacking takes place just to prove that it can be done. Some mistakenly think that because the place they are surfing at gave them a password to access the wireless and Internet, they must be safe. Well, guess what, the password is also given to the hacker/intruder by the restaurant staff when they buy their coffee. Whether you pay for your WiFi or it’s free with the purchase of your latte, you’re not likely to be the only one using it.

The following are some tips to make your WiFi surfing safer:

Do
Use free WiFi like you would a public Internet terminal.
Use secure POP, IMAP or SMTP for your Outlook or other mail programme. Ask your IT administrator about this.
Login to your Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook or work webmail sites if you see HTTPS:// in the address bar and there is no error certificate prompting.
If you are doing any serious transactions, use VPN (virtual private network) to your secure network.
Install a personal firewall software on your computer. Windows firewall also does a basic filter of the bad traffic. Make sure it’s turned on.
 
Don't
Don't use your email programme if secure encryption is not embedded.
Don’t do banking at free WiFi spots. If you think that if you check your bank balance really quickly, you’ll be safe, think again.
Don’t accept an error certificate while logging onto a secure website.