AnchorFree–A free WiFi hotspot VPN solution to do the job?
While I don’t get too security paranoid using WiFi hotspots, I do know that it’s a risk. Microsoft had been testing a WiFi utility/manager that also had a VPN solution built in. Unfortunately they abandoned it. I could probably just keep using the beta, but well … I actually lost it with several machine/OS wipes and reinstalls.
Free VPN solutions have been on my mind lately, though. A friend of mine has her first laptop and is enjoying the new world of WiFi and I was telling her about WiFi security (or the lack thereof). Which got me thinking again about VPNs.
Last night I saw a link from another b5 blog That Damn PC pointing to a PC Mag article on WiFi security. Okay, IMNSHO, this article barely covers the basics. They suggest that with a firewall, anti-virus, anti-spyware, and checking for https … you’re pretty much set and okay. Well, maybe.
Look I know that spoofing a hotspot id and people packet sniffing at your local cafe might be a tad farfetched, but now that people are doing the Bedouin cafe thing more often and think about all the conference WiFi, well where there is opportunity criminals will start to take advantage of it. Trust me.
Yes, the PC Mag article did piss me off. It was just too simplistic. It didn’t get into the very real risks and very easy solutions.
A little Google search later I found a year old (ish) article on Wi-Fi Networking News on a free VPN offered by AnchorFree. It was a quick download and install. Yes, it even worked in Vista.
It looks okay, but really I like something that I can see establishes a VPN connection. You know like a connection available in the Connect to … dialog. However it is free, it does seem to work and I’ll be testing it over the week while I’m in San Francisco at Web 2.0 Expo (read my coverage here).
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1 opinion for AnchorFree–A free WiFi hotspot VPN solution to do the job?
Pimp Your Work - iPig–Another WiFi Hotspot VPN Solution to Try
Apr 26, 2007 at 1:32 pm
[…] get a bee in my bonnet about. Truth be told, even though I have AnchorFree installed (I talked about that one last week or so), I haven’t put it to the real test … which is ironic isn’t it? I have the […]
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