Olympic Attendees: Here's How You Stay Safe From Hackers

The networks broadcasting and live streaming the 2012 Olympic Games are reportedly well-prepared to deflect cyberattacks and hackers, but what about the average Olympic attendee who is connected to public WiFi?

This year's Olympics is poised to be the most social and mobile in history and, yes, that means plenty of streaming content, but it also means thousands of visitors equipped with smartphones, laptops and tablet computers.

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With such a high concentration of mobile technology in one spot, the speed of 3G and 4G connections may suffer, leading mobile device users to turn to public WiFi at a restaurant, coffee shop or to one of the 500,000 WiFi hotspots built in preparation for the games.

As the Chief Operating Officer of European telecom O2 put it in 2011: "[WiFi will] play a huge role for those people who will want to use data services at the Games, including Facebook and Twitter."

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Public WiFi by its nature is typically unprotected, which ensures most people can access the network without trouble. However, that also invites hackers to hang out on public WiFi networks, waiting for unsuspecting users to transmit sensitive and valuable data, such as passwords or bank records, which they can then steal.

BT, the local ISP which is providing a majority of WiFi hotspots for Olympics attendees, recommends that users download Virtual Private Network (VPN) software immediately upon connecting to their public WiFi to bolster security through encryption. However, public WiFi in restaurants and other areas often make no such recommendation and are occasionally running on simple consumer routers that offer little by way of hardcore protection from hacking.

So what else can Olympic attendees do to prevent being hacked while on public WiFi? Martin McKeay, security evangelist at cloud computing firm Akamai, added the following tips:

• Turn off WiFi, Bluetooth and NFC when you're not using them
• Don't check sensitive accounts on public WiFi (Do your banking before you leave home)
• Turn on data encryption, if your phone or device offers the feature
• Don't have extraneous apps or subsystems running on your device

"I think the steps to combat mobile security are simple," said McKeay, "but most people won't be thinking about these simple steps."

The key lesson for users of public WiFi at the Olympic Games and everywhere else: Be smart and you'll be fine. What tips do you have for staying safe on public WiFi? Share them in the comments below.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, selimaksan

This story originally published on Mashable here.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/olympic-attendees-heres-stay-safe-hackers-123001737.html

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