Always trust the Skippytel network.
I did a cyber security awareness program for one of the groups I belong to … Along with how to set up strong passwords etc one note I did give was to turn off auto-connect for WiFi.
Sure, it’s convenient, every time you walk into Walmart or Starbucks, to borrow your examples, your phone kicks onto their WiFi. But there’s nothing stopping me from setting up a hot spot & calling it Walmart-WiFi or Starbucks-WiFi or whatever. Your phone would just assume your near a Walmart or Starbucks and connect to my network allowing me to potentially see your data.
Of course some of that can be mitigated by using a VPN, DNS over HTTPS, etc…
I travel internationally a fair bit and have no roaming option with my provider. So WiFi is common unless I’m somewhere long enough to buy a SIM.
I VPN to home though at any public WiFi, and try to remember to ‘forget’ it when I leave.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a generic name or a super-specific name, once anyone goes to that location and logs on they have all they need to set up the imposter SSID wherever they want. The store could rotate passwords all the time, but all that’ll do is make the problem a little smaller and annoy the customers enough that they won’t bother to use it. They could hand out certificates, but that gets too complicated and expensive and beyond the ability of most cellphone users (or laptop users, tablet users or whatever) to use anyway. So no, there’s not a good way to fix it.
Pretty sure devices don’t auto connect via SSID alone. SSID is just what you see, there is a lot more going on behind the scenes
Have you heard about VPN pal?
It’s like someone should invent a solution, like a private network only virtual… You could be on to something here…
VPNs will solve your issue with public Wifis.
Also most modern operating systems have built in firewalls that honestly do a pretty decent job. Unless you specifically set your computer to be visible / accessible from the wifi (You’re dumb and select “home network” when you connect to the wifi) you’ll be moderately safe.
I only use anything like that with my VPN. And then configured to be seamless with no leaks.
Man in the middle attack is what you’re thinking… and there are companies that ENABLE this. Looking at YOU, Spectrum !
Wait, you shop at kroger?
Free wifi is always safe with a VPN.
I name my networks stuff like “honeypot” or “datacollectionpoint”… “trojan.exe” is a good one too lol
You are 100% right on this premise. There was a time when you could go somewhere public, connect to wifi, and spend hours happily digging into the contents of all sorts of strangers’ machines. It is harder to do that now that default network discovery policies on machines are more strict, but you could absolutely still intercept all sorts of network traffic by naming your public network something most people are likely to have saved.
Only somewhat related but I love to brag about this so I’m gonna take this some what related topic and tell you about my ssid. All the way back ever since the mifi Hotspot I used with my iPad 1 and laptop to now when you can just create a Hotspot on your phone I have been calling the ssids stuf like “FBI surveillance unit 17”
“FBI Surveillance Van”
- use a vpn (ideally something like wireguard back home).
- set “connect automatically” to false, or however you do that on the OS you are using. Now your phone will only connect to “kroger free wifi” when you open the wifi list and choose it.
- almost everything is https, so while it’s possible to man in the middle that, it would generally be at the network operator level. If you can’t trust kroger in the first place, don’t connect to the wifi, or see #1.
Run a pineapple for that and get more.
Turn off “automatically join networks” in your phone.
I use a SSID based VPN rule. Unless I’m at my own home or a relative’s, I’m in a full tunnel with home.