My office sits directly across from a StarBucks cafe, a distance of less than 10 meters and is often filled with tourists drinking coffee and logging in… to a wi fi hotspot…. but which one?

James Martin from PCWORLD wrote recently

In late August, Starbucks officially launched the T-Mobile HotSpot network in partnership with Deutsche Telekom AG, T-Mobile’s parent company, and Hewlett-Packard. The high-speed Internet access service is currently available in 1200 U.S. Starbucks locations, with an additional 800 expected to come online by year’s end. It’s also available in some airports, hotel lobbies, and other locations.

but also many locations throughout Europe, you will find a StarBucks hotspot like my next door neighbor.

He then went on to write

T-Mobile HotSpot requires you to shut down firewall software in order to use the service. Call me paranoid, but I won’t be banking online while in Starbucks. Accessing the Internet through a secure Virtual Private Network is no problem, according to the company, though I couldn’t test that claim.

which is where I am going with this article. Security at the hotsots is for the birds and it is more than likely that you will find yourself on a “false” or “con” hotspot that is there to catch you unaware.

Hotspot security issues have been mainstream news lately as many large cities are setting up local wi fi services and even as Google and Sprint fight for coverage and future hold in the market.
The concern over hotspot security has been in general negelected by the public and especially StarBucks customers… I can on any given day, I can access to at least 20 laptops or pda s and thoroughly go over through whole system and extract any file I want. Even through a bluetooth connection I have been able to mess around..but details are not revealed.

to be continued….