Free or not to be free… That is the question! Free wireless internet is popping up more and more. You have Road Runner Speed Zones, the Honolulu International Airport is free, hot spots, coffee shops; you name it. They are getting more and more available. But when is free NOT always a good thing? Answer: When it comes to your internet connection. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why free isn’t always a good thing.

A few months ago on our Facebook page  I told you about a free application that lets you sniff and ultimately take over a users social network account over an open network. That can get technical so we won’t go into the details here. But there are a ton of other non-technical reasons why free isn’t good.

Most banks, financial institutions and bill paying systems do have an SSL or Secure Sockets Layer on the website. That’s all well and good, and you are generally safe when SSL is employed. The problem is, whether we like it or not, when we are signed into an unsecured free zone, and there are countless other people who are also connected and they can always be looking to take over your Facebook accounts or even worse, take your identity! They can nail your emails or dig through your pc and grab cookies that have enough information to access your personal accounts or for identity theft. It’s kind of hard to believe that it can be that easy right? Go and search online for a program called Firesheep. That should scare you enough! Whacking someone's cookies can be a big deal! If you read the countless articles on Firesheep, you will see that it is for real and a genuine threat!

So what can you do to prevent this when you are using a free spot? A few easy solutions!

1. Always make sure that you use encryption on your emails. If you have a Google (Gmail) account or use Google applications to power your email, you are in good hands. They started encrypting from Jan 2010. Ask your email provider if your webmail is encrypted! Look for that padlock on the bottom corner!
2. Run an application like Ccleaner. This will get rid of your IE history, cookies and other forms of information already cached into your computer.
3. Make sure that you have recent patches and the latest updates for your phone if you ever go wireless too. And yes, phones ARE susceptible to this too.

The biggest tip? Go to your internet provider and get something like this:

Intelligo, your own mobile, wireless, Wi-Fi hotspot. 

Of course it’s not a free solution, but there are definite advantages. I would rather be paying 40 bucks a month to use this device on the beach, while hiking, driving around the desert looking for Vegas, in the hotel room (forget about those hotel internet fees!) or just cruising Chicago’s O’hare B Concourse while everyone is looking bored. (Trust me, it works there!)

The lesson to be learned is nothing is really free. Of course you can always leech off of a neighbor’s broadband connection, go to any of the free location hotspots, go to the Apple store and use an iPad, but in the end, is it really worth all the trouble trying to get a free but unsecured connection? Or would you rather have a Mobi, Sprint MiFi or Time Warner Cable Intelligo (which by the way has no download limits and can connect up to 5 devices at once in 4G!) and be rest assured that your Internet is safe, reliable and always on the go with you? Just keep in mind that if you get a virus or spyware infection or if one of your personal accounts get hacked just once, that 4G device you are paying for just paid for itself.

If you have any questions on wireless devices or safer internet surfing, feel more than free to let me know! Shoot me an email and I will get back to you within one business day. Wanna know why? Because it works everywhere I am!