Free Public WiFi
A couple of years ago, when we were traveling to Texas via airplane, we had the bad fortune to be stuck in the JetBlue terminal at JFK for six hours. Fortunately, JetBlue offered free WiFi in the terminal.
While there, I saw what I thought at the time were spoofed access points, including some labeled “Free Public WiFi”.
Fast forward to last week at Normandy Farms. “Free Public WiFi” reared its head again. This time around, it struck me that it might be a virus on someone’s machine that tricks you into connecting to it by posting as an WiFi access point. So I Googled “Free Public WiFi” and discovered it isn’t a virus, but a “feature” of Windows XP.
Dwight Silverman, the tech reporter at the Houston Chronicle, wrote about his experience with “Free Public WiFi” back in 2006here. Supposedly Microsoft was going to issue a patch for it back then.
A more up-to-date article on the “Free Public WiFi” issue can be found here.
In practice, you should never connect to any network under the heading of “ad hoc” unless you or someone you know are the ones who created the ad hoc network. The ad hoc option is for use in the special circumstance of connecting wirelessly a group of computers in the same vicinity to share files.
Windows, unfortunately, connects to any type of WiFi network by default. To turn this off, do the following:
1. Click on the Wireless option in the System Tray and open the Wireless
Network Connection window.
2. Click on “Change advanced settings”.
3. In the Wireless Network Connection Properties window, click on the Wireless
Networks tab.
4. Click on the Advanced button.
5. Click on “Access point (infrastructure) networks only”