Free Wi-Fi: User Beware!

More and more travelers are taking advantage of free Wi-Fi service. People are bringing with them their laptops, cell phones and tablet devices to stay in touch with friends and family back home.

While free Wi-Fi is convenient, it is also putting your information as risk by some less-than-honest people.

According to The Japan News (Yomiuri Shimbun):

The spread of free Wi-Fi (see below), a public wireless local area network (LAN) that gives users access to the internet, poses a security threat in which people’s information may be intercepted. 

Using free Wi-Fi services enables people to access the internet without worrying about how much data they use, but information transmitted by the services is not encoded in many cases. 

In June, Tokyo Metro Co. increased the number of stations where its free Wi-Fi service is available to 175. Users must first install an app on their smartphones, and enter their email address and other information. They can then access the internet. 

People can use the free Wi-Fi service for up to three hours per log-in, with no limit on the number of log-ins.

But there's a downside:

But users are cautioned that many of the free Wi-Fi services do not encode data, which makes transmitted data unreadable by third parties. Encoded data are decoded by putting in passwords and other means, and Wi-Fi routers in users’ homes prevent outsiders from reading data by using encoding and decoding processes.

To read more, go here.