cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25779751

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)

  • AwesomeLowlanderEnglish
    1•1 day ago

    Most people are better off buying a lightly-used Mac (or not, it’s been a while since people have been happy with Apple) or replacing their laptop with a Fairphone or Graphene OS phone than switching to Linux from Windows 10.

    I don’t really see the connection there with somebody bringing down their own firewall, hosting open services, and basically putting out the welcome mat. You can burn yourself on any OS (and if you can’t, I don’t want to be using or pushing it).

    Best option is to just go to places where the wifi service is affordable but not free so that the operator needs to keep tabs on whether users are doing something other than browsing the internet or playing games

    What place charges little enough for the WiFi to be affordable but has somebody live monitoring network traffic?

    • @[email protected]English
      1•12 hours ago

      You’re telling me Internet Cafes can’t exist? Yes, they’re not available, but they should be. And supporting industry of small business IT Security providers still do business with motels and hotels.

      Maybe increase the standards of service requirements, but if not? Yeah, we need to find a way to make free WiFi that doesn’t demand you trust the operator will monitor for malicious users, instead of limiting safe internet access to our own homes at best.

      • AwesomeLowlanderEnglish
        1•11 hours ago

        Internet cafes, at least in my experience, provide you computers. They don’t sell you WiFi access. And I very much doubt they have somebody monitoring network traffic live.

        If you’re saying they COULD exist, I doubt they’re financially viable.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•11 hours ago

          Maybe it’s different in the EU then. Here, when cafes had internet, they offered a WiFi password for customers.

          • AwesomeLowlanderEnglish
            1•11 hours ago

            I feel like we mean very different things with the term ‘Internet cafe’. This is what the term brings to mind for me.

            Apparently you’re thinking of actual cafes with F&B. Cultural differences I guess.

            I still don’t see the point. Even if the location offers some sort of ‘secure’ WiFi, you cannot trust them. Every link on the chain between your device and the server must be considered potentially malicious. The main thing that needs to change is the current leak of sidechannel data needs to be halted.