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this post was submitted on 29 Sep 2023
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Privacy
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In the EU they already had a complaint, because it violates GDPR, but in any case I would never use a public WiFi without a VPN, and even less in places with these conditions, there is also free WiFi in some Rstaurants (even in most McDonalds), public Libraries and others. Fuck surveillance advertising
There's just no reason to unless you are really skimping on phone data. Random wifi hotspots are one of the most dangerous things for an average joe in terms of infosec.
Agreed. My iPhone connects to my home VPN via Wireguard as soon as I leave my home WiFi. Has the added benefit of pihole ad filtering everywhere.
Wireguard and PiHole combo is such a blessing.
Have you experienced any downsides to using pi hole? Does anything stop working?
Obviously the first ad links in google don’t work any more, which drives the wife crazy ;-) Also nowadays more and more websites complain about me using an adblocker.
But technically, not really any problems at all.
I used to before but my family was extremely bothered that they couldn't click on ad links. If I remember correctly, it's pretty easy to set up if you want to just try it.
In the 6 years I've ran mine, I've not had any issues and I run a blocklist with over 1 million domains on it.
If I was to run into something that's blocked that I do want loaded, I can just open the pihole interface and either whitelist the blocked domain or disable blocking for a short time, each with just a couple clicks.
So the first thing you give any sketchy WiFi is your home address?
Yup. What are they gonna do that every other portscanning bad actor isn’t doing 24/7 already?
Also, how would they distinguish between my private VPN and that of a commercial provider?
I have seen it on Europe... maybe there was some way to circumvent it hidden away, not sure. But you could type a random email and that's it, like they don't send anything to confirm the email or anything once you submit you have access to internet.
Better to send a disposable mail, where yo can receive the log data before it expired.
eg
etc
anonbox from ccc
They seem to explain pretty well how your data will be used, why would this violate GDPR?
No way to opt out?
I might be wrong but i think it is because they don't give you the option to opt out and use the wifi.
Should they? I would simply not connect to their Wi-Fi and move on, it's not like they are obligated to provide you internet.
Went to a Walmart the other day and my phone automatically connected to a wifi that was apparently hosted by my cell carrier. Immediately turned on my VPN because wtf. I disconnected at first then realized I didn't have any service at all which was probably why it existed. Thankfully didn't need to log in but that's why I have Firefox relay.
I was about to say.... Isn't using public wifi's extremely dangerous?
Yes, because of this using an public WiFi without VPN is a no-go
Right, and this Walmart in Europe would be where exactly?
https://storelocator.asda.com/directory
Asda is Walmart
That's England so no gdpr anyway
UK gdpr not withstanding, the question asked was: where in Europe. UK remains a part of Europe post brexit.
The provisions of the EU GDPR have been incorporated directly into UK law as the UK GDPR. It's ok to not know this stuff but it only takes like 10 seconds to google before you comment about something you don't know.
AFAIK it does not exist in Europe, but I meant that these conditions in the EU would not be tolerated. Maybe because of this there isn't a Walmart in the EU, there are a lot of Malls from other companies and none of these use this practices in their restaurants, mostly with free WiFi for their visitors. Offering free WiFi is already enough of a benefit for them, because it attracts customers, they do not need to intrude on their privacy with an obvious attempt to spam them and make money with their data.