Milwaukee is getting free WiFi in two of its parks, courtesy of city government. I love seeing this kind of thing, and we’re seeing more and more of it.
However, it’s a pity that the author of this article felt the need to find a “security expert” to crap all over it with half-assed, semi-accurate warnings:
Ben Sherwood, a privacy adviser and president of Sherwood Personal Security, based in Oakbrook, Ill., said people using a wireless network should not conduct sensitive or private communication over the system.
“It’s a huge security risk. Whenever you use a wireless network, you are opening yourself up to the information you’re sending being snatched out of the air by someone else,” he said.
Sherwood said buying items over the Internet or checking an online bank account using a wireless network would be a bad idea.
Sherwood is just sowing FUD here. First of all, anyone with a cablemodem connection is in the same boat as a wireless user: your communications can be captured by anyone in your neighborhood and read. This is also true if you’re using the DSL in your hotel room — and the connection in your office is sniffable by your sysadmins.
The most glaring inaccuracy is the business about buying stuff and checking a bank-balance over a wireless link. The security of this activity is determined by the presence or absence of an SSL connection. If your bank uses SSL (and all of them do), then you’re (relatively) secure. If your e-tailer uses SSL (and nearly all of them do), then you’re (relatively) secure. And if they don’t, you shouldn’t be doing business with them in the first place: sending sensitive information in cleartext over the Internet is insecure regardless of your connection.
The other thing that ticked me off about this article is this:
The wireless networks use a popular technology called Wi-Fi, which is short for “wireless fidelity” and sometimes mentioned by the technical description 802.11b.
As Glenn Fleishman has pointed out, “WiFi” isn’t short for wireless fidelity. It’s a play on words, a joke based on “Hi-Fi.” Explaining to readers that “WiFi is short for ‘wireless fidelity'” is nonsensical. A reader who hasn’t heard of WiFi won’t be enlightened by this explanation. If you feel that your readers are so dim as to miss the gag, then, for heaven’s sake, why not write something like, “WiFi, a pun on ‘HiFi,’ is a marketing term for the 802.11b wireless standard, which allows computers to connect to the Internet at high speeds from distances of up to 300 feet.”
(Thanks, Layla!)