WI-Fi

[Phantom ordie]

Do you have trouble with Wi-Fi connections at places like McDonalds or Starbucks or any place traveling? I'm going to be traveling this summer and need to pay some bills. I've never had to use my laptop outside my home. Any suggestions?

[JohnCeglarek]

The obvious...take it to McDonalds or someplace and make sure it works before you have to actually rely on it. I've never had a problem, but....

John

[Tom G]

I recently was out of town and tried the same approach to check my emails. At one McDonalds I could get connected to their server but not on the web. The workers gave me a number for tech support and they acknowledged they had a problem and said it would be a day or two to fix. Three days later still no joy. The nice thing about McDonalds is that there are plenty of them. I went to another of their locations and connected just fine for the rest of the two weeks I was there. Hope that helps.

Tom

[ChristopherC]

Uh, I'd be wary of doing anything like banking or emailing on a public open Wi-Fi spot.

Chris

[Phantom ordie]

I,m going to be traveling for about 3 months and having to accsess my bank and pay bills. Any suggestions on security precautions?

[crazydon]

I,m going to be traveling for about 3 months and having to accsess my bank and pay bills. Any suggestions on security precautions?

Will you be staying at any hotel/motel's with secure sites? Those you should have better luck with than a open WIFI connection like Starbucks or Mikey D's....which I WOULD NOT doing any type of banking on with the open connection

[rc.amsterdam]

Be careful with those WI FI connections. I would contact someone who knows about securing your PC. As an alternative: could you use another computer in a hotel/motel to do your banking?

Bottom line: BE CAREFUL. Have a nice trip.

[HOLMES]

I,m going to be traveling for about 3 months and having to accsess my bank and pay bills. Any suggestions on security precautions?

Do you pass any Libraries ..as they usually have access to computers and you could use theirs...

[Kalashnikov-47]

If you have an ethernet cable, some hotel/motels have an ethernet connection

option in addition to a wireless one. Hard-wired is a better security option.

[Hornet]

Make sure you disable "File and Printer sharing" in your Wireless network connection properties.

You should also review your Windows Firewall settings, check under "Advanced" that no exceptions are checked for your wireless connection.

An up to date virus protection should be active. An additional Desktop firewall like the free Zonealarm would be a plus

Cheers,

Hornet

[ThatJeffGuy]

re security...you have 2 potential worries

- Man in the middle attack - somebody grabs your wireless data and does something nefarious to it

- Keystroke loggers and trojans

For me...the man-in-the-middle can look at all my data he wants since the connection from the browser to the bank is going

to be SSL and therefore encrypted. It's a theoretical risk but the probability is a lot lower than people make it out to be when you see

the size of computing power you would need to crack the 128-bit encryption. Going the 'wired' route will eliminate any concern here.

The real risk as far as I'm concerned is using a computer other than your own that you have no idea what trojans or keystroke

loggers are installed on. So I would definitely stay away from libraries or any suggestion of using somebody else's computer other

than your own....assuming of course that you have your own computer protected with the 'holy trinity' (anti-virus / anti-spyware / firewall)