720 – Be careful when online: Tom talks Public Wi-Fi

Episode 720 – Public WiFi
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 720 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about public Wi-Fi. You know, everybody's hey, including myself, is touting lifestyle, business and digital marketing you can do from anywhere. Well, that doesn't mean you ignore Internet safety hazards of working remotely, especially on public Wi-Fi. Hey, and your home Wi-Fi can also be hacked. That'll be a subject for a future episode. But today I'm going to talk about publicly accessible Wi-Fi and what you should do to keep yourself safe. All right. I hope you didn't miss episode 719. That was a dozen marketing tools that I use every day. Any anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screw the commute.com/and then the episode number that was 719. Now follow me on TikTok at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire. I got oh 20, 30, 40, 50 little short training videos You'll get a kick out of some of them are funny and but a lot of them will give you a real concise idea of what you need to do to either make money or save money online. All right, let's see. Make sure you pick up a copy of my automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. You will thank me because it'll save you hundreds of hours into the future if you did even a few of the things in that book. screwthecommute.com/automatefree. While you're at it. Pick up a copy of our podcast app at screwthecommute.com/app. You can put us on your cell phone and tablet and take us with you on the road.

[00:02:07] All right. Let's get into some of the perils of public Wi-Fi and what to do about it. Well, I've got friends and students who are digital nomads, and I'm sure you've heard people calling themselves coffee shop millionaires and and names like that. Well, the allure of working from anywhere is strong. And it's a great idea as long as you know the risks and take steps to protect yourself from hacking, identity theft and all the other bad things that can happen to you if you ignore the simple things that you can do to protect yourself online when you're away from your home network. Now, some of this stuff came from a survey from high speed internet.com. They surveyed a thousand people in the USA. They had to be 18 years or older. And they wanted to understand how people used public Wi-Fi. This was just last year, 2022. And they found that 56% of the people. That use public Wi-Fi, don't use a VPN. Now VPN is something that. Encrypts your data for you. And it's cheap. There's free ones, but I would get a cheap one that's a paid one. And I covered this on episode 589, by the way.

[00:03:28] Screw the.com/5 89. So this VPN is just a simple thing that you can do to protect yourself when you're connected to public Wi-Fi. Anyway, they found that 56% of people don't use it and 41% never even heard of it or don't use one at all. All right. So and this kind of surprises them because you know how many people are supposed to be concerned with their online safety, you know, So. So it's a good idea to use a VPN. Any time you're using a public Wi-Fi and this stands for VPN is virtual private network. Like I said, it obscures your data, encrypts it. So anybody that grabs the data, which is fairly easy for hackers to do on this public stuff. Can't see what it is. It's all encrypted. Now, let me ask you this. Did you realize for about 100 bucks you can buy what's called a pineapple pen testing device? So what's this? I'm not asking you to do it. I'm just telling you how easy it is for hackers to do it. So this is a device that's legitimate for ethical hackers. These are people that do what they're called pen testing or penetration testing. So they're hired by companies to try to hack into the company so that the company can see how secure their network is. Well, the same exact device is used by hackers. So here's here's how they do it.

[00:05:00] They go to a place that has lots of free Wi-Fi networks and they create a fake one. Usually with a name that looks legit. And this is actually called the evil twin attack. Okay. And so you accidentally or on purpose say, oh, that looks like a good free network. I'll grab it. Once you log on to that network, they can see and steal everything that you do on your phone or tablet or laptop. I mean, one criminal said he grabbed all he needed for identity theft from about 60 people in a few minutes. All right. And the pineapple device is so small, it could easily be set up in a backpack. And after stealing the info, the hacker disappears into the wind and sets up somewhere else. And these people are extremely difficult to catch. So here's some of the kinds of ways that hackers can get you and not necessarily all with the pineapple device, but you know, that one is called the evil twin attack. And there's another one called The Man in the Middle Attack. And this is where they break into a network or one of these free networks, and then they catch all the data that's going. Between you or the other patrons and the network, and then they go look at it later and see which ones were stealing, you know.

[00:06:26] So man in the middle. And then they also have these password cracking devices where they just hit just millions and millions. And in a matter of minutes, they use user IDs and passwords to to unlock the router for the management. And that's how they get in to do the man in the middle attack. Right. Now, some of these I mean, I don't really understand the tech, how it happens, but another one's called a packet sniffing attack. And again, they they grab stuff that's going across unsecured Wi-Fi and then they unpack the data to look for financial information and log in stuff and all that. Now, the last one that I know of or is mentioned in this article was security vulnerabilities and or misconfigurations. See, when you get a router, it usually has a default password. And if people just slop up a cheap router and try to, you know, add this to their business, a lot of times they don't even know to change the default password or network name. And so. If you know, a Linksys router, for instance, has a default password, I think it's password or admin or something, right? So those are easy to break into and then they can get in there, they can log into the network, they can put malicious software or, you know, all kinds of bad stuff on the network that you get just because you're logged in.

[00:07:57] So all these bad things can happen to you. All right. So now you don't have to use a VPN if you're just doing mundane stuff like watching a movie or looking at Pinterest for decorating ideas or something like that, that's fine. The problem comes when you do sensitive stuff like put in passwords or do banking or taxes or any legal stuff or whatever. Okay, so here's the deal. Don't use public Wi-Fi for sensitive stuff. If you must use it because you don't have a good cell phone signal. You should have gotten yourself a VPN and use it. Like I said, they're dirt cheap now. Yes, it's probably going to be a little bit slower. But here's the thing, folks. No matter how slow the VPN is, it couldn't possibly be a slower or take more time than it will take you to recover from identity theft and earn back the money that's going to get stolen from your bank accounts. All right. If you don't pay attention to this. Now. Public Wi-Fi that requires a password is slightly more safe than a network that doesn't require a password. But the key word here, folks, is slightly all right. Anyone frequenting that business can get the password and they hardly ever change it. And hackers are smart. They might get it one day and not use it for a month so that if they are on video being at the business, their theft wouldn't happen till after thousands or tens of thousands of people pass through that business.

[00:09:39] Hey, and and many businesses have cards printed with the password for their network. Sitting in the lobby, you can be sure they don't change the password very often. So anyway, having a password on a free public Wi-Fi system is virtually zero protection for you. If you mess up and do dangerous things on an open network. Simple as that. And just think of all the people out there funding these hackers because they don't pay attention to what I'm talking about today. Now, according to Aradcom, that's Aerocom. Close to 50% of Americans regularly use Wi-Fi hotspots to carry out financial transactions. 18% use it to work remotely. Now, what percentage of that? 50%, you know, doing financial transactions do you think are using VPNs? Probably not a lot. So don't be one of them. Okay. Now, if this hasn't scared you enough, here's a link. I'm going to put a link in the show notes to an article on Aura. Now, I'm not endorsing them because they sell stuff to protect you from this, but I don't. And I don't know the quality of their stuff. But anyway, they do explain all the kinds of things far more than I talked about today that can happen to you if you're not careful on public Wi-Fi.

[00:11:03] Like I said, your home Wi-Fi is not exempt from this stuff either, especially if you live in a more populated area. There's you know, you don't notice stuff that happens as easily as much. But anyway, they'll do that on a separate episode. Now, if you need help with this and all the other kind of crap we get into in our digital marketing business, but it's still, like I said, working remotely and working from home is 10,000,000,000% better than going and putting up with a bunch of idiots in a in a corporate setting. Right. So. So I'm all for it. But you got to do it safely and do it correctly. But no matter what, it's way better than going to a stupid job all day long. So I'd be glad to help you with this. We have my longest running, most successful, most unique mentor program ever in internet and digital marketing is right here at your fingertips. All you got to do, pick up the phone or email me and we can discuss it and get you started right away. All right. Check that out at Great Internet Marketing Training.com and we will catch you on the next episode. As long as you didn't get your identity stolen because you didn't do what I told you today. All right. So see you next time.