Beware Wi-Fi HotSpot Scammers

Category Household | Permalink | 15. February 2007

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If you take your Wi-Fi enabled laptop with you on your travels then, like me, you are always on the lookout for a free Hotspot hook-up when hanging around at airports, hotels or cafes. If you do your homework and visit sites like free-hotspot. Before you go you should be able to find one. However, be on your guard if you are casually trawling for a free connection, you could be opening up your PC and its contents to a hacker.

Here’s how it works. A crook with a Wi-Fi laptop sets up shop by hanging around a legitimate hotspot. Their PC is logged on to the web and set up for Internet Connection Sharing. Along comes our weary traveller and the Wi-Fi monitor on their PC flags up the bogus connection as open and available. They think it is Christmas, click on it to log on and bingo, the two PCs are linked by an ‘ad hoc’ or peer-to-peer connection and the data on the victim’s laptop is exposed.

You can avoid it happening to you by firstly avoiding suspiciously free hotspots, and secondly by re-configuring Windows XP to only accept Infrastructure or Access Point connections. To do that right-click on the Wireless Connection icon in the System Tray (next to the clock) and select ‘View Available Networks’, now click ‘Change Advanced Settings and select the Wireless Networks tab then click the Advanced button and make sure that ‘Access Point (Infrastructure) Networks Only’ is checked.

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