Risks of Using Coffee Shop WiFi

With this country becoming more and more mobile everyday almost every business you go into today offers free WiFi for its customers to use. Were you aware that these networks can be very risky to use if you are not being careful with what you are doing? There are a number of things you should do if you are going to use wireless Internet at a coffee shop or other public location with public Internet access.

In Windows Vista through Windows 8 when you connect to a network you are given the option to choose what type of sharing settings you want to have set on your computer while you are connected to that network. On home networks there is no problem with choosing the home network profile. When you are connecting to a public network you should choose to use the guest or public profile to prevent sharing files on your computer. By default sharing is turned off on these profiles. If for some reason you have modified the public profile make sure to disable sharing while connected to the public network. The second prevention measure to help prevent connecting to malicious networks is to make sure not to connect to public networks automatically. You are best to make sure you know what network you are connecting to. It's too easy for a hacker to setup a generic hotspot for you to connect to with a common SSID like "Linksys" for you to connect to and intercept your traffic potentially accessing confidential information from you browsing the Internet. You should never be doing anything confidential on a public network anyhow... Like we just said, your should not be doing shopping, banking, or anything else that is confidential on a public network. Doing any of these tasks puts you at increased risk for identity theft. It is possible for someone to capture your Internet traffic while doing things like banking and gain access to your account by stealing passwords or getting other confidential data. Use caution when on a public network. Your computer should always have an antivirus on it and should have a firewall turned on, especially when you are connected to a public network. A firewall tells your computer what kind of traffic is allowed in and out of your computer. One of the most important things you can do to protect yourself is to watch your back! Many times people "shoulder surf" and can see your usernames and passwords to what ever you are doing. The easiest way to prevent this is to sit with your back to a wall as silly as that sounds. Protecting yourself from hacking is very important in this day and age. Being careless when using your computer can result in identity theft which happens everyday. For information on how we can help your business increase security give us a call! www.abccomputersolutionstoledo.com

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