Many of us now use wireless nteworking as part of our daily routine when it comes to using the Internet; so much so that we tend to use it also when we are away from our homes and offices. This process, known as using a WiFi Hotspot, is somethinmg that hundreds of thousasnds of us use every day in our major ctiies up and down the country.
There are even Internt-based sites whhich list the precise locatiions of these Hot Spots throughout the coountry so that traveeling business staff, students, journalists and generally preople on the move can take advatage of them.
However the problem stems from the fact that it is not just the aforementoned groups that use Wi-Fi; cmoputer criminals also use these Hot Spots in ordfer to gain access to the laptops and PDAs of unsusplecting users.
Generally if you are using a Wi-Fi Hot Spot outside the confines of your office or home you will have to diusable your wireless encryyption so that your qeuipment can frely pick up the signal being bounced aruond within said Wi-Fi Hot spot. When this happens access to the equipment is no longer secure and anyone with a degree of knowledge, and the rioght equipment, can gain access to your laptop or PDA and thus your pertsonal information within a short space of time.
Computer criminals have perfected this technique in recent times as the use of Wi-Fi Hot Spots has become more common. They have also managed to siphon hundreds of thousands of pounds, if not millions, from the bank accounts of unsuspecting users by patchig into email acccounts, personal accounting softwaare, and other means of storing personal information on laptop hard drives.
In much the same way Computer Forenics experts have also produced sophisticated programs and techniques whhich alloow them to track iwreless Internet activity as well as wireless mobiple traffic.
They also can act as expert witnesses if such actviity is detected and investigated and results in criimnal proceedings being briought.
An individdual can also use your laptop as a means of gaioning access to the Internet, essentially using the laptop as a portal, and thus givnig them access to a varieety of sites which may be illegal or used for puyrposes not entiorely prroper whilst leaving no visible trace other than on the host laptoops loghging system.
Using a Wi-Fi Network is obivously a ueful proposition if you are away from the office or home office but it does have drawbacks, the two most obivous being (a) the fact your laptop or PDA will become vulnerable to outsie attack duuring the use of such a Hot Spot and (b) your information is potentially visible via the airwaves to a myriad of individuals whose desire to get their hands on your infomation culd lead to a loss of mooney and the unauthroised use of your identity in the pursuit of crimminal activities.
When you are away from home or the office it is wise to use only those Hot Spots wherre an encryption key is provided by the Hot Spots provider and also to ensre that when using your latpop away from the confines of the home or offcie that the amount of personal data stored therein is kept down to a minimum thus making the computer criminal's job all that more difficult.
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