Free streams of BBC TV shows for UK citizens are one example. The ability to stream some content is tied to your location. With a VPN, it's possible to circumvent some of these controls.Ĭloser to home, VPN services are sometimes used to circumvent another kind of restriction. Fortunately, VPN protection works over cellular connections, too, and most are smart enough to handle the hand-off between cell towers and when you move from cellular to Wi-Fi.Ĭorporatons and inviduals use VPN services every day to secure data, and the technology is also used in countries that have strict control over Internet access. This is a much more exotic attack than Wi-Fi snooping, but does happen.
Just like when an attacker controls a Wi-Fi access point, a bad guy (or a spy) can use this setup to vacuum up your wireless traffic without your realizing it. Clever criminals can set up a phony cellphone tower called a Femtocell, jam the LTE and 3G bands, and force phones to connect via the less secure 2G. The faster and more modern wireless standards like LTE are safely encrypted, but the code protecting data sent over 2G has long been broken. That's over Wi-Fi, but what about cellular? While certainly safer than Wi-Fi, there are still risks associated with cellular networks. That's because, to the rest of the world, your device appears to have the IP address of the VPN server to which it is connected. It successfully misdirects advertisers and nosy Website trackers. Exiting through the VPN server has another advantage, too. From there, it heads out onto the wilds of the Internet, unmolested while in transit. With a VPN, all of your data is sent through an encrypted tunnel that connects your phone or tablet to the VPN service's remote server.
If you think it sounds far-fetched, Pwnie Express saw exactly this kind of attack at the Black Hat 2016 security conference, and it successfully fooled some 35,000 devices. Worse, the Wi-Fi network could have been set up by an attacker looking to scoop up all your data. Someone on the same network could be snooping on your traffic. What Is a VPN? When you connect to a public Wi-Fi network at, say, a coffee shop, there's no way to know if your connection is really secure.
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