Finding safe places with decent public Wi-Fi for better privacy

Published in the category: Network

You need to find safe places where you will be able to do your sensitive activities using some publicly accessible Wi-Fi (without any account/ID registration, avoid CCTVs).

This can be anywhere that will not be tied to you directly (your home/work) and where you can use the Wi-Fi for a while without being bothered. But also, a place where you can do this without being “noticed” by anyone.

If you think Starbucks is a clever idea, you may reconsider:

They probably have CCTVs in all their shops and keep those recordings for an unknown amount of time.
You will need to buy a coffee to get the Wi-Fi access code in most. If you pay for this coffee with an electronic method, they will be able to tie your Wi-Fi access with your identity.

Situational awareness is key, and you should be constantly aware of your surroundings and avoid touristy places like it was plagued by Ebola. You want to avoid appearing on any picture/video of anyone while someone is taking a selfie, making a TikTok video, or posting some travel pictures on their Instagram. If you do, remember chances are high that those pictures will end up online (publicly or privately) with full metadata attached to them (time/date/geolocation) and your face. Remember these can and will be indexed by Facebook/Google/Yandex/Apple and probably all three letters’ agencies.

While this will not be available yet to your local police officers, it could be in the near future.

You will ideally need a set of 3-5 separate places such as this to avoid using the same place twice. Several trips will be needed over the weeks for the various steps in this guide.

You could also consider connecting to these places from a safe distance for added security. See Using long-range Antenna to connect to Public Wi-Fis from a safe distance.