Wi-Fi Hotspots: The Vulnerability of Smart Mobile Phone Users



Smart mobile phone

Thanks to smart mobile phones, Wi-Fi hotspots are now common scene at many public places. Wi-Fi hotspots are available at places such as café shops, restaurants and banks. They tend to be invaluable to many us when we are visiting or are within any of these public places. We can access internet services and do a lot of activities by connecting to them as if we are connecting to our home network. However, the security of many Wi-Fi hotspots is weak.

Although before we can access a Wi-Fi hotspot for the first time, we are required to register. We automatically gain access to this network next time we are in close proximity to it. As have been shown, static passwords are more vulnerable to cyber criminals than dynamic passwords, which are changed regularly. If we cannot do without it, it will be good practice to change our password each time we access a Wi-Fi hotspot.

Some of us who access Wi-Fi hotspots through https connections may think that we are safe whilst on the networks and may not need to change our password regularly. This assumption is not accurate. Https, which is an acronym for hypertext transfer protocol secured, is used largely for online payment transactions and personal data collection. It is believed that any data transmitted via this secured layer connection are encrypted during the transmission and cannot be decrypted by any third party – a hacker. For most of the times, this assumption is through and information transmitted via https connection is secured. However, hackers connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot can use a software called SSL-strip to decrypt any secured data transmitted on the network. If changing our passwords regularly and using a secured connection to access the Wi-Fi hotspots are not safe, how can we access secured internet services outdoors?

We can avoid the risks associated with Wi-Fi hotspots when we are not at home by connecting to our phone provider network rather than to a Wi-Fi hotspot. Any connection between our phone and this network is secured. Hackers cannot gain access to any data transmitted through the network because they are encrypted. However, accessing the internet through the phone provider network tends to be slower than accessing the internet services through a Wi-Fi hotspot. For the fact that some of us may not like to spend too much time online, we may prefer the faster Wi-Fi hotspots to the phone provider network. In addition, smartphone connections to Wi-Fi hotspots are set to default, which means our phone can connect to a hotspot before we can even make the conscious decision of doing so.

It is apparent from these that there are many implications of using our smart mobile phones to access Wi-Fi hotspots. Some parents, for example, tend to use their smart phones to monitor their children’s activities constantly to make sure the children are safe. Monitoring these children through a Wi-Fi –hotspot accessed by paedophile hackers therefore can put these children at great risk. In addition, many of us that provide our sensitive information such as address, date of birth, and bank details to service providers while connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot may be handing out the data to cyber criminals. I hope next time you are attempting to access a Wi-Fi hotspot, you’ll think twice about its security.