Given how cheap mobile data is these days, why use public Wi-Fi anyway?
because there is no reception inside a huge store. Speaking from experience.
The Czech Republic has pretty good coverage, actually. You can get 2G in garages of shopping malls and 4G on pretty much every train. It is uncommon to come across a paved road that has no reception. However, there is a cartel of telecoms and…
Our median wage is comparable to Poland, not Germany!
Another super pointless thing in our life that is only this bad because of IP laws and the multimedia industry.
Not quite. Even if copyright didn’t exist, they still would block porn etc. I even encountered a Wi-Fi network where YouTube videos worked except those with content warnings (such as mentions of self-harm). I wonder how that can be done despite HTTPS - maybe the questionable videos have a different domain? I should have investigated the issue more but NewPipe made it seem like the video had been taken down so I just assumed that was the case. (It was at a train station in southern Bavaria, most likely Wangen im Allgäu. I was there only once.)
Modern firewalls are man-in-the-middle attacks.
Captive portals are effectively MitM but that’s why they only work on HTTP (notice the crossed-out lock icon).
What would be the translation for Kaufland into Czech? Kaufland comes from Germany. Kauf(en) = shop(ping), land = land.
Země nákupů. That would be Land der Einkäufe but we don’t combine words nearly as much as Germans or Orwellian communists.
Wait, you're from Memmingen?
Anyway, I’ve been to Memmingen and I liked the Satanic upside-down cross atop the Himmelfahrt church!
I stayed in the FMM Hostel self-service airport accomodation in a former hangar or something, it was cheap and shitty as expected. See my other comment here about what also happened to me on public Wi-Fi during that trip at a train station somewhere between Memmingen and Lindau.Also, I visited the two-story Kaufland in Ravensburg (the lower level is just parking but whatever) We don’t have such a thing here! I stole a giant LCD clock from their e-waste bin and turns out it worked, it’s in my room to this day.
I mean, you run your own firewall (that’s what I got from the title) amongst I assume other privacy controlling measures (tho it’s really just an assumption) and also wanna use a public network of a goddamn shopping center…
are you really surprised?
No, I don’t run a firewall. It’s their own firewall that blocks their own landing page where I would see an “accept terms” prompt.
A difference my phone has from a usual setup is that I replaced the http://connectivitycheck.android.com/ ping address with 127.0.0.1 (which never fails so my phone does not complain about “limited” networks). A side effect is that I have to go to http://neverssl.com/ or another HTTP-only page in my browser to show captive portals. This is why the right screenshot is in Firefox, not WebView.
Ah, alright. That’s pretty shitty.
Though it’s still not the wisest to use these open wifi networks. Their firewall did a favor tor you IMO. 😄
Connecting to free wi-fi without a vpn is b0nkers
That’s what VPN companies want you to think. All services that transfer sensitive data use HTTPS so I don’t care.
Anyway, you can’t connect to a VPN server in the “sign in to the network” phase.
Openvpn to your own network.
You can’t send packets except to the captive portal before you sign in to the network. That’s how captive portals work. Only after signing in can you then reach other servers, probably including your own.
Yes, you will need to connect to the landing page first.
As far as security concerns about sketchy VPN services, you can at least control your connection with openvpn.
Use tls-crypt to encrypt your initial connection.
Don’t use public Wi-Fi for anything sensitive regardless of your confidence.
In 2019, I’ve been to China for my cousin’s wedding. I didn’t get a VPN, I just connected to a free public network whenever I needed it. Haven’t seen a single landing page. Probably was heavily spied on, but I didn’t get holed up in a solitary cell when going to the airport, so it went well I guess.
Some co-workers told me they got scam attempts trying to get into their bank accounts.
