As sweet as it sounds it’s the last place you and your mobile devices what to get caught up in.
That’s exactly what the Wi-Fi Pineapple device is designed for. It’s especially popular with the white hat hackers and individuals and companies researching their Wi-Fi security. The purpose of this and other similar hackers tool is to intercept unsecured Wi-Fi connections with a special router and custom software.
In simple layman’s terms – Public hotspots are dangerous to use because an attacker can turn off all other Wi-Fi hot spots and simultaneously replace them with “fake”Wi-Fi connections that look the same (Starbucks, Airport, Panera Bread, etc.) Instead of it reading exactly like the true Wi-Fi connection , but in reality you are no longer connected to the Real Hotspots, your are connected to an man-in-the-middle attack, whose intent is to steal passwords and other data from unwitting victims
As always take precautions in public places, be wary of connection problems. Hackers can get to you easily with an open Wi-Fi network. Not so much with one that’s protect by encryption which requires a password to connect. If you get connected to a rogue router the hacker can see all of your communications from your device such as passwords, logins, usernames, websites visited, emails, text messages, skype, voip etc. The absolute main thing you need to do as a public Wi-Fi user is make sure you are connected to a valid, secured connection.
In addition to some of Darren Kitchen suggestions listed in the article we recommend::
- Consider utilizing your OWN wireless card, and NOT use public hotspots.
- Encrypt your communications.
- Oh yea, or you could just not utilize your PDA….like that’s going to happen.
http://www.zdnet.com.au/5-tips-to-protect-you-from-wi-fi-honeypots-339333504.htm
