[tor-talk] Using public Wi-Fi for access

[David Carlson]

Hi,

I would like some advice about accessing Tor through public wi-fi networks at airports, hotels, Starbucks and Mc Donalds.  I did not find information about this that ordinary people could understand on the torproject faq page.

I would suppose that, in general, they keep logs which probably include MAC addresses and access times, durations and whatever.  This could be used by either police or criminals to track use of my computer around the globe.  Also, some of these networks use the technique of blocking all access until an attempt is made to use http, whereupon they hijack the attempt to redirect to their log-in page.  Then, if the log-in is successful, they finally allow whatever traffic they consider acceptable from, I suspect, that particular MAC address.

Is this conjecture all wet, or am I correct that I am probably compromised if I use public wi-fi?

Is there a way to use public wi-fi safely?

David
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-talk/attachments/20110906/bcba324d/attachment.htm>