In the age of the Internet, we all want free Wi-Fi access . But is it safe?
These days, hundreds of thousands of businesses and public spaces offer “free Wi-Fi Hotspots.” You’ll find them everywhere, from shopping malls, airports, and coffee shops to restaurants and more. The United States has the largest number of such facilities.
However, these free Wi-Fi connections are managed by providers who offer internet connectivity in exchange for your valuable connection information.
This information includes your email address, phone number, and sometimes even your social media profile and other personal data.
What's even more surprising is that they use this information to track users' locations, even when they're out of Wi-Fi range, and power the rapidly growing location-based Wi-Fi marketing industry.
The majority of users don't even bother to check before accepting the terms and conditions when signing up and connecting to a Wi-Fi. There are phrases like "location data, location history, device identifiers, and MAC address" that let us know their intentions.
Using MAC addresses, Hotspot providers can discover where you live, your shopping habits, the places you visit frequently, and so on. This data is then sold to advertising companies.
Although there are no exact figures available on the amount of data collected, undoubtedly hundreds of millions of people have unknowingly handed over their personal information and consent to tracking by companies.
Although these companies claim that the collected data is anonymized through hashing to prevent identification, we cannot be completely sure of this, as policies vary from company to company.
