Using unsecure public wi-fi on HTC Desire

Hamster · 27 Feb 2011 at 20:57

Anyone know what I need to do to an unrooted Desire Z to prevent anything untoward happening to my phone and data whilst using an unsecure public wi-fi network?
Thanks

Django x2 · 27 Feb 2011 at 20:59

Probably nothing. I've never ever had a problem. What sort of issue do you think you'll face?

Hamster · 27 Feb 2011 at 21:18

Lucero said:
Probably nothing. I've never ever had a problem. What sort of issue do you think you'll face?

Just want to be sure that nobody can access my phone in any way, steal data or do any other manner of mean things to it. I'll be wanting to use it soon in the NIA, Birmingham and I guess there will be many other people accessing the wi-fi at the same time.

Sunbed · 28 Feb 2011 at 10:21

Could use VPN maybe? Don't know much about this sort of thing, but curious all the same...

Deleted member 77746 · 28 Feb 2011 at 10:26

If someone wants to steal you data they will, no matter how locked down it is. As root can cause you all sorts of problems but you haven't rooted it. This is why likes of Sony/Apple/Microsoft don't want root access to their phones but some clever so and so has done it.

Hamster · 28 Feb 2011 at 14:22

iDroid84 said:
If someone wants to steal you data they will, no matter how locked down it is. As root can cause you all sorts of problems but you haven't rooted it. This is why likes of Sony/Apple/Microsoft don't want root access to their phones but some clever so and so has done it.

I understand that but is there nothing I can do to make their task a little more difficult should they want to do so?

Robbo · 28 Feb 2011 at 14:42

Dont worry about it, at all.

Hamster · 28 Feb 2011 at 16:15

OK, just my paranoia at work I suppose. I was assuming that it's no different from having a laptop on an unsecured network with people being able to access shared folders.

Deleted member 77746 · 28 Feb 2011 at 18:16

Hamster said:
I understand that but is there nothing I can do to make their task a little more difficult should they want to do so?

Hamster said:
OK, just my paranoia at work I suppose. I was assuming that it's no different from having a laptop on an unsecured network with people being able to access shared folders.

If someone wants to access it, and they no how too they will. You can go so far with security and someone will always be able to get around it.

tntcoder · 28 Feb 2011 at 18:56

There is a lot you can do to make using public wifi very secure.

The risks of using public wifi are:

Data/password sniffing - everything you do that isn't encrypted (i.e doens't use SSL) can be sniffed by anyone. If you use an SSL site though then you are safe as long as you take heed of any certificate warnings you get. This means that things like Gmail, Facebook and online banking are perfectly safe on public wifi (if ssl is enabled in the site's options).

So you can either use SSL only web sites, or secure everything using a VPN or similar secure proxy. Assume that any other unencrypted traffic is being watched and you will be fine.

The second risk is that someone could exploit your phone while you are connected to the wifi network. If this happens it's game over, but what are the realistic chances of you ending up one the same network as someone with these skills? It is a risk though, there are recent vulnerabilities in Android for example that are trivial to exploit and an attacker could force you to visit an infected website.

So basically use SSL sites or a VPN tunnel and you're fine 99.943% of the time

Deleted member 77746 · 1 Mar 2011 at 09:29

tntcoder said:
There is a lot you can do to make using public wifi very secure.

The risks of using public wifi are:

Data/password sniffing - everything you do that isn't encrypted (i.e doens't use SSL) can be sniffed by anyone. If you use an SSL site though then you are safe as long as you take heed of any certificate warnings you get. This means that things like Gmail, Facebook and online banking are perfectly safe on public wifi (if ssl is enabled in the site's options).

So you can either use SSL only web sites, or secure everything using a VPN or similar secure proxy. Assume that any other unencrypted traffic is being watched and you will be fine.

The second risk is that someone could exploit your phone while you are connected to the wifi network. If this happens it's game over, but what are the realistic chances of you ending up one the same network as someone with these skills? It is a risk though, there are recent vulnerabilities in Android for example that are trivial to exploit and an attacker could force you to visit an infected website.

So basically use SSL sites or a VPN tunnel and you're fine 99.943% of the time

This is far complex for a normal user to do, people just want to connect it and just work.