As free public Wi-Fi becomes more and more widespread, so do the risks involved.  Starbucks announced today that they will begin to offer free Wi-Fi at every location.  This is a great convenience but it also prompts us here at Make It Work to warn you about potential risks and how to make yourself safe at these locations.

Though most of these public places will have firewalls to protect you from the outside, they still may not protect you from other folks within the same network.  Many of the wireless hotspots that you may visit will be completely unencrypted, making them easy to connect to, but what is easy for you, is cakewalk for someone poised to take advantage of an unprotected public network.  So here are a couple of tips and settings you should be aware of before you use a public hotspot.

The first thing one should do is turn sharing off.  When at home or the office you may share files, printers, or even allow remote login from other computers on your safe home or work network.  However, when on a public network you definitely need to turn all sharing off, because anyone can access your computer if you keep these settings on.  So here is how to turn them off -

PC Users: Open your Control Panel, then navigate to Network and Internet > Network and Sharing Center, then click Choose Homegroup and Sharing Options > Change Advanced Sharing Settings. Once there, you will want to turn off file and printer sharing, network discovery and Public folder sharing.

Mac Users: Go to System Preferences > Sharing and uncheck all the boxes. You will then want to turn off network discovery, which will be in the same spot. This will prevent others from seeing your machine on the network, making you less likely to be targeted.

Most operating systems will have a basic firewall to protect you from most unwanted assailants.  You may in fact have your firewall up and working properly, but for the sake of caution, go to your security settings under Control Panel > System and Security > Windows Firewall; and on Mac under System Preferences > Security > Firewall, and make sure your firewall is turned on.  You can also manage which applications are allowed access by clicking “allow a program or feature” in Windows and “advanced” in OS X.  Your firewall will not always be perfect, and it won’t save you from everything, but it is always a good idea to make sure it is on and functioning properly.

Everyone is familiar with either seeing the HTTP or the HTTPS protocols before all websites.  This indicates what type of information is being sent to and from your computer.  The HTTP protocol is the standard prefix and is found on most websites.  This protocol, however, lacks the S found in HTTPS.  The S stands for secure, and is essential for establishing the information you provide to a website is kept safe.   Always make sure you see the S in HTTPS before imputing personal information into a site. This will help you remain safe on a public network.  Anyone with the smallest amount of know-how can spy on the information coming and going via a site that is under the HTTP protocol, so it is essential you keep an eye out for that subtle difference in website URLs.

There is only one way to have complete confidence in your security and that is by simply turning your wireless off.  If you don’t need it, turn it off.  It’s a breeze to do and it will help save your battery life.  On a Mac, click the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar and select the “turn off airport” option.   On a machine running Windows, you can simply right click on the wireless icon in the taskbar to turn it off.  This option is obviously not useful if you need the internet but if you aren’t using internet, it wouldn’t hurt to turn it off.

With these simple tips you should be on your way to being safer in these new free hotspots popping up everywhere.  As a rule of thumb, it’s always better to be overly cautious while surfing the web than completely oblivious.  Surf safe my friends.

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