Hotspot shield, wifi security

came across this program on another message board. Does anyone know anything about it or Anchor free? Pretty good reviews and no issues that I can find.



http://www.anchorfree.com/hotspot-shield/




Category
All Airport Bar Beach Boat, Ferry, or Ship Bus Station Business Center Cafe Campground Car Wash Convention Center Disco Downtown Area Gas Station Golf Course Government Office Health Club Hospital Hotel, or Resort Hotzone Internet Cafe Library Marina Municipality Office Building Office Park Other Park Phone Booth Private Club Pub Public Space or Building Residence Residential Area Rest Area Restaurant Rural Area RV Resort School or University Sports Venue Store or Shopping Mall Tourist Attraction Train Station Training Center Travel Center or Truck Stop Why You Need Hotspot Shield?
Most public wi-fi hotspots are not secure and make your computer and communications vulnerable to hackers and security breaches.Hotspot Shield gives you a simple solution to maintain your anonymity and protect your privacy when accessing free wi-fi hotspots.

What Does Hotspot Shield Do For You?
Hotspot Shield helps secure your computer, your anonymity and your online communications when using free wi-fi. Hotspot Shield ...

Ensures your computer remains anonymous and private when logged on to free wi-fi hotspots.
Auto encrypts and protects inbound / outbound Internet traffic (email, instant messaging, VoIP calls, web surfing, etc.) as it's transmitted thru the air, using wi-fi.
Thwarts wireless hackers keeping your personal data locked down while using an unsecured hotspot.
Provides professional security and protection

 

Never heard of it.

I know some people use Tor when on wireless because it will encrypt your data, however this will slow your connection down due to the onion routing.

 

Everything, eventually, can be cracked.

And over half the time the information is unwillingly given up by the computer user themselves.

 

true, nothing's perfect, but it never hurts to put some effort into protecting onesself.

 

That's dubious at best. Knowing a thing or fifteen about wireless and computers in general, you have basically two ways to be "safe" over the wireless. #1, use a WPA encrypting router. If someone else has the WPA password though, they can decode your packets. So #2, you have to use an SSL tunnel to anything you're connecting to. If you connect to your bank using https, it doesn't matter whether it's over wireless or whatever, it's still encrypting the packets before it even leaves your browser, much less gets out over the wireless. Pretty safe overall. Or you can use a VPN to another computer. This is how you can do things over the Internet safely, it lets you connect from the Internet to an internal LAN. Most commonly used for businesses, and it encrypts all traffic, but it's not something most home users can set up. It's hard from professional computer nerds (aka me) to get working right, so a layman doesn't have a chance

Basically, this program is full of crap, and I would NOT trust it at all. If anything, it'll steal your passwords and send them to the authors. Hotspot shield can't encrypt anything if the access point doesn't support it, and if the hotspot supports it, then you're already encrypting and you don't need the program. Bad news all around.

So my recommendations: Don't do banking or anything sensitive over unencrypted access points, and always (even at home) make sure that you use SSL (https) and that the certificates are for what you think they're for. Type in internet addresses manually, rather than clicking on them. Email (unless you encrypt it with something like GPG) should ALWAYS be assumed to be as secure as a post card sent through the regular mail system. Even when you're sending it from your home computer, through a secure connection, email is an open protocol. Encrypt it if you don't want just anyone to be able to see it. IM's, there are ways to encrypt those as well, but it's a bigger pain than it's worth. Just don't send sensitive information over any of those methods, especially in a publicly accessible internet connection. And NEVER type your password for anything on anyone else's computer. Keyloggers are easy to install, easy to hide, and hard to remove. If it's not your machine, or a machine you trust, just say no.

Hope I didn't scare you too much, but these programs prey on people who think that computers and networking is 'magic'. It's not. It's understandable, and if you take a few precautions, it can be pretty safe using it.

 

If you're in college, check with the IT Dept. Many Universities have VPN services nowadays, and all you have to do is have the client installed on your computer. Connect to a hotspot, fire up the VPN Client, log in and connect, and you're secure. No need to set up the VPN itself, because the University does all of that.

That's a better and lot more secure option than a software program that doesn't explain how it plans to encrypt your data.