The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:
Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.
Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/wifi4eu-citizens
Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)
Anyone happens to know if this would be secure? I mean, I’ve heard of being wary connecting to public WiFi. What guarantees someone won’t connect to a WiFi4EU network belonging to Shady McHoodie in the corner of a coffee shop instead of an official network? Do usual security / privacy recommendations apply? Would a VPN be recommended for said network? (I presume VPNs are good for public WiFi. Not sure if that is indeed the case).
Tricky thing is, you may think you’re connecting to a legit network, but anyone can set their network name to a legit-sounding one. Mr. McHoodie could have a WiFi4EU, a Free-Airport-WiFi, a GFOTYBUCKS-WiFi. I assume at least once connected, your device won’t be fooled into auto-connecting to a similarly named network
It’s not really a concern anymore, now that pretty much all a lambda user’s traffic is encrypted. Anyone collecting your wifi traffic only sees garbage.
Websites also can’t be so easily spoofed. The spoofer would need to have a certificate issued by an authority trusted by your device for the spoofed domain, which is highly, highly unlikely to happen as long as your software is up to date, which nowadays is done automatically.
So really, the fear of untrusted public wifi is a thing of the past, and a good marketing lie for VPN companies.
Well, that’s not necessarily true, or else https://mullvad.net/en/blog/introducing-defense-against-ai-guided-traffic-analysis-daita wouldn’t need to be a thing.
I’m not worried about a website watching me as much as a government agency that wants information to use later.
Sure, your traffic itself is encrypted, but your browsing patterns aren’t and it would be wise to think that pretty much any network you connect to, even your home one could be being observed by some party and logged.
IMO it’s beneficial to use a VPN 24/7 on any connection. Mullvad costs 5 euros a month for and honestly I get better speed connecting to their Self hosted Sweden server from the US for most of my internet traffic since my ISP can’t QoS it
Privacy and security are two different things. A public WiFi is safe, I never said it is private. I actually said a VPN helps with the privacy issues in my following replies.
Edit: After re-reading the comment you replied to, I do see that I didn’t specify if I am talking about privacy or security, that is my fault. I was talking about security.
No worries, I appreciate you responding. My comments were purely about privacy