Wireless at Starbucks

[mnewsome]

I write to inquire about what one can do to prevent intrusion while navigating the internet in such a Wi Fi environment. I have XP pro with virus. antispyware, and firewall enabled. Aside from disabling file and print sharing in the windows firewall what other precautions can one take? Guidance sought.

[jbennet]

not a lot. What you need to remember is that public wifi is usually unsecured or poorly secured (even if its encrypted, a single compromised client machine out of the hundreds that use that access point each day, could compromise the security of all the clients). Simply, never ever ever connect to a corporate vpn or do online shopping or banking over public wifi.

[GrimJack]

Also, be careful of phish sites that look like you are connecting Starbucks access point. and turn off plug and play.

[jbennet]

and turn off plug and play.

i think you mean UpNp as opposed to PnP

[caperjack]

A live Linux cd ,if it for simple net surfing, would be more secure at such a place ,
Try Puppy Linux or Knoppix,with Puppy they actually have ones that you make that the disk is made in multi-secession mode also, you can actually save info back to the disk if your laptop has a burner in it .

[GrimJack]

i think you mean UpNp as opposed to PnP

d'Oh! I dl-ed UnPlugNPlay from grc.com and missed that pun! i definitely meant UPnP

[jbennet]

UpNp is network related, PnP is hardware e.g pci cards