Are you using your Palm, iPAQ or Laptop at wireless hotspots? Are you plugging in at hotels thinking that your wired connection is safer than wireless? During the second week of May (2004) a Denver TV News team went to the Denver airport and snagged some poor chap's cellphone number, Social Security number and Visa card number out of the air.

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I'm heading down to a conference where pretty much everyone will be using wifi to stay connected to the net. It's simple because the wifi access points are open and you can easily connect. The problem is that pretty much anyone can see what you are doing, except if you take special precautions. For the most part, transmission is in the clear and an eavesdropper can see what you type. That includes user names, passwords, and anything else you do online.

VPNs remain the best choice for connecting individuals over the Internet. VPN operates at the network layer, securing all data between endpoints, regardless of application, unlike SSL connections where users are limited to applications that can be accessed from a Web browser.

No unencrypted data passing over public access Wi-Fi hotspots is safe from the prying eyes of hackers using simple packet sniffing tools, industry analysts have claimed. According to analyst the Butler Group, existing security measures built into 802.11x wireless infrastructures is simply not good enough to protect data..

Use your Palm OS device's Internet connection to HotSync, access intranet email or web servers, remotely control your PC or perform any other local network enabled task. Mergic™ VPN allows you to securely access a private network, such as your corporate or home LAN, using a connection to the Internet.

The PIA-HotSpotVPN is the first corporate-class VPN security accessible to everybody. DTLink Inc. in a common effort with WiFi Consulting Inc. provides an extended service for the occasional hotspot user. HotSpot users will be able now to purchase a VPN connection for 1 day, 3dys a week.. only the time they are away from their corporate or home office.

..The reality of the nightmare is that we're adding technologies at furious paces where the information that's communicated from devices is as easy to read as this column. Currently, the biggest privacy compromise comes from WLANs. During my tour of New York last week for CeBIT America Version 1.0, I took along a wireless analyzer that's in my lab for review, along with a NetGear 802.11a/b/g card...