On Mar 20, 2017 14:43, "Vara La Fey" <varalafey@gmail.com> wrote:

Nuh uh. Open hotspots is one of the great things about the internet, and from time to time everyone needs one - sometimes in the middle of the night or during holidays when lobbies with keys posted aren't available. Open hotspots are also a good way to maintain anonymity for dissidents, whistle-blowers, LGBT who are not "out", etc. When I have my own routers, I often run them open for all these reasons, and I always will.

I sometimes educate family and friends about PGP, and one of these days I will run a Tor node as well, with all the censor-circumvention tools available. The more that censors and anti-anonymity Orwellianists don't like it, the more everybody should do it.

I don't give .001% of a damn whether actual criminals use hotspots or anything else, in exactly the same ways I don't give .001% of a damn if they use guns, cars, roads, kitchen knives - or anything else.

Instead of desiring safety over the animating quest for freedom, why don't you suggest educating people to use https? As it is, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (www.eff.org) recently reported that https use is up to 40%, IIRC.

- Vara

On 3/20/2017 12:29 PM, Victor Odhner wrote:
I’m really annoyed that so many companies offer open WIFI when it would be so easy to secure those hot spots.

Restaurants, hotels, and the waiting rooms of auto dealerships are almost 100% open.

I am not one to say “there ought to be a law” because we have too many doggone laws, and I’m not that into a lot of demonstrating and yelling. But I would love to help educate companies on why they should secure their routers.

If I were a progressive type, I’d suggest putting stickers on those venues saying:

We don’t have passwords on our WIFI

because OUR WIFI (and YOUR passwords)

should be available to everybody

with no effort!

But being more right-wing, I’d much rather recognize that they’d be happy to do the right thing if we could explain it to the right people.

I’ve repeatedly thanked the mechanic shop I use (C&R Tire on Tatum) because they have a key posted and I can feel sort of safe going online while I wait for an oil change. But all the places that have open routers are corporate owned so it does no good to gripe to the folks behind the desk.

Any ideas on this?

Thanks,

Victor
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