Someone had recently pointed out a security flaw whereby someone can call their router attwifi and your phone will automatically connect to it if you have it as a known network. All of the sudden I'm seeing attwifi signals in NY in places I havent seen before and nowhere near a starbucks. Has anyone else noticed this?
Mac pro dual quad early 2008 and macbook core 2 1.833,
Mac OS X (10.5.7)
Yes, keeping in mind that even legitimate attwifi hotspots transmit content in the clear and can be intercepted by that woman sitting in front of her laptop across the cafe or the bookstore, so if you are concerned about this you should never retrieve or send email using an attwifi hotspot, or any non-encrypted hotspot for that matter.
This is a trivially easy task using free software. If you want some idea of what a serious hacker can accomplish try reading (or seeing) +The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo+ 😉
You could also turn off the wifi, and then turn it on when you are wanting to connect to a legitament known wifi network. Granted this does add in an extra step, but with wifi off you could get slightly better battery life too. Just an idea, but then you wouldn't have to tell the iPhone to forget a network everytime.
Someone probably could name a network attwifi right across the street from (or even in the same building as) a legitimate hotspot, but doing so wouldn't be very bright which would probably be discovered in short order. Who's to say someone that hasn't connected to an AT&T hotspot previously decides to do so where a non-legitmate wireless network is also available in the same building or directly across the street and someone who pays attention to such things asks - how come there are or were two attwifi networks available for me to join?
I don't spend a whole lot of time or any time studying exactly where legitimate AT&T hotspots are located. Please.
I know this much - two primary locations are Starbucks and McDonalds and a number of airports.
I do pay attention to how I'm connected to the internet with my iPhone, which is available on the menu bar with a quick glance. I avoid conducting any type of financial business with my iPhone or with my computer when connected to a public hotspot even though such a connection via a website is secure.
I'm not saying this is something that should not be looked in to and addressed or that shouldn't be a concern. Funny that the very same applies to computers/laptops, and no one has mentioned a word or concern about this in regards to a computer. Since it is Apple and the iPhone with plenty of media attention, something like this is usually portrayed as being a potential problem for Apple and iPhone only, which it isn't.
The only way this can be addressed is by providing a manual option for automatically re-connecting to a known wi-fi network - making it less seamless and more work. After that and this is made known to the public as an option with the iPhone, it will then be up to each user to make use of it in regards to AT&T hotspots.
