Yikes. If you only take one piece of computer advice this month, let it be this: unsecured wireless networks are not safe. This isn't news, but there's a new and compelling reason to be more careful: Firesheep. A lot of websites take great care to secure a login page, but not the rest of the site. Firesheep allows people to 'sidejack' (as opposed to hi- or lo-jacking) into your accounts and take control. Facebook, Gmail and Amazon are just a few sites that can be exploited using this technique. Firesheep is an add-on for the Firefox browser, and it's readily available and easy to use. The creator, Eric Butler, says he made Firesheep to prove a point, rather than to steal your personal information - but make no mistake, he's not the only one using it.
There are all sorts of computer geeks out there - Eric Butler might be considered a 'Grey Hat' - but there are any number of people with malicious intent or a mischievous streak. All of a sudden, those vacation photos sitting in your inbox are posted on your Facebook account - not much of a stretch if someone is able to capture your username and password. The potential headaches are limitless. Butler's ultimate goal might be to help the user, but it's going to cause a lot of fuss in the meantime. There are some workarounds to protect yourself, but not necessarily comprehensive or foolproof, and primarily for advanced users. TechCrunch has a good article about it. The small upside is that Firesheep only captures information transmitted by browsers, so an email client like Outlook is safe (Gmail accounts can be integrated into Outlook).
Our advice? Avoid free Wi-Fi for now. This will get fixed eventually, though we can't say exactly when. If you can't, then try to avoid using services like Facebook, Twitter and Gmail when you're on an unsecured network. To be clear, unsecured means it doesn't require a password to access, or has a password that's given out freely, like at a book store coffee shop. Also be aware that in many workplaces, you're on the same network as all of your coworkers. To be completely safe, it's best to use the internet only on a secure network used by people you know and trust. Sorry, folks - it's a brave new world out there. Buckle up!
