Hate to look a gift horse in the mouth, but the proliferation of AT&T hotspots across NYC is proving to be more trouble than it's worth.
I will admit part of the problem starts with me. I am addicted to Starbucks iced coffee, and visit most mornings. I surf the web a bit and head to work. Because I do this most days, I auto join the wifi network at my local Starbucks.
Unfortunately EVERY Starbucks has the exact same network SSID. Herein lies the problem.
With my iP4, if I go anywhere NEAR a Starbucks or other AT&T hotspot, my phone joins the "attwifi" network. Problem is, it joins regardless of the signal strength, and more often than not, the signal is not adequate to use the web or email. But it's just strong enough that the iPhone won't kick back to 3G automatically. So I end up manually turning off wifi. Then I have to turn it back on when I'm in range of my own home or work network. I end up turning wifi on and off up to 5 times a day because of this, depending on how much walking around I'm doing.
That's the nuisance part. The security issue is potentially much larger. As more and more of these attwifi hotspots being auto joined by millions of users, more and more data sniffers are apt to create fake attwifi hotspots and potentially compromise users' data. I read about it already happening with fake JetBlue wifi hotspots last year.
Someone, be it Apple or AT&T, needs to address this. Hotspots need some sort of authentication beyond a common SSID.
I will admit part of the problem starts with me. I am addicted to Starbucks iced coffee, and visit most mornings. I surf the web a bit and head to work. Because I do this most days, I auto join the wifi network at my local Starbucks.
Unfortunately EVERY Starbucks has the exact same network SSID. Herein lies the problem.
With my iP4, if I go anywhere NEAR a Starbucks or other AT&T hotspot, my phone joins the "attwifi" network. Problem is, it joins regardless of the signal strength, and more often than not, the signal is not adequate to use the web or email. But it's just strong enough that the iPhone won't kick back to 3G automatically. So I end up manually turning off wifi. Then I have to turn it back on when I'm in range of my own home or work network. I end up turning wifi on and off up to 5 times a day because of this, depending on how much walking around I'm doing.
That's the nuisance part. The security issue is potentially much larger. As more and more of these attwifi hotspots being auto joined by millions of users, more and more data sniffers are apt to create fake attwifi hotspots and potentially compromise users' data. I read about it already happening with fake JetBlue wifi hotspots last year.
Someone, be it Apple or AT&T, needs to address this. Hotspots need some sort of authentication beyond a common SSID.
