The “Free Public WiFi” SSID seems to be everywhere - at airports, on planes, and in hotels. Based on what the SSID spells, it seems to be the perfect solution for those seeking to connect to the Internet because it is “Free”…cost nothing…”Public”…you break no laws connecting to it…”WiFi” …a few clicks and you’ll be surfing in no time.
Viral SSID
In reality, this SSID is just one of many viral SSIDs that exist anywhere people are with laptops (almost always Microsoft Windows based laptops). In almost all cases this SSID is not a real WiFi hotspot access point but someone else’s laptop in Ad-Hoc mode advertising this SSID. Why does this SSID always appear and more importantly is it harmful if you connected to this SSID?
If you connected to the “Free Public WiFi” SSID in the past, don’t worry…in almost all cases your PC is not infected with a real virus and no data was stolen. Just remember to stop connecting to random wireless networks that you can’t verify as being trusted, especially free ones!
Blame Microsoft Wireless Zero Configuration
The answer to why this SSID seems to be everywhere can be blamed on Microsoft, more specifically a Windows feature called Wireless Auto Configuration (aka Wireless Zero Configuration). Wireless Auto Configuration “provides automatic configuration for the 802.11 adapters”.
Posted via web from timmmii
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