Keeping your browser safe. Demonstration of wifi hacking into accounts and how to protect

[Catherina]

[Xipe Totec]

1. Very useful and informative. Thanks! nt

[RKP5637]

2. Excellent! PS: Also is a Chrome extension for this. Works great for me. n/t

[AllyCat]

3. Wow, I have a lot to learn about computers.

Personally, I NEVER log into the wifi network at my employer. People do it all the time and I have always maintained it would give "megahealth" access to everything. So, I disable it most of the time. But never thought about this with my e-reader. I have the wi-fi off at work, but the dang thing has my card number saved in it and I have been unable to figure out how to get it off of there.

But even if I am logged out of FB...with the wi-fi off...can someone track me?

Would love to figure this stuff out. I think I am "safer than most", but probably not after watching this.

[Xithras]

5. A general rule with wifi...

When connecting for the first time, look carefully at the encryption type. If it has the letters "AES" in it, you're safe. Even the NSA can't crack AES encryption with a decent password without dedicating several months of supercomputer CPU time to it. For nearly 15 years it was completely uncrackable. Nowadays some holes have been found, but you need access to some serious computer hardware and a huge chunk of time to pull it off. A private hacker would pay thousands of dollars to access the cloud resources needed to do it on his own.

If the password is something stupid ("p@ssw0rd&quot , or if it doesn't contain the AES designation, it's best to consider the connection untrustworthy. Treat it as if everything you do is visible to everyone around you...because it just might be.


And you may want to look into that e-reader thing. Depending on the service, your credit card may not actually be stored on the device at all. It may be stored on the servers of the remote store, which is actually safer for you than typing it in every time you need it.

As to your question...no, you can't be tracked if you're not online.

[dickthegrouch]

6. AT&T and Comcast already know everything about me

However, I never connected to my employer's wifi network from my devices, since that would give them the right to look at everything I do using their network,, including accessing my bank or healthcare accounts.

In short, I use https:// in as many situations as possible and never connect to a wifi I don't know.

Even if you do encrypt to a wifi portal that's encrypted you are only encrypting between those two points. Someone with control of the wifi router can still see all the data leaving on the other side of the router, unless the final destination is encrypted.

[DeSwiss]

4. Thanks!

- I now have the Google disconnect add-on. Suck it EVIL ONE!

K&R