Securing Your WiFi Connection

[kmully]

I'm considering buying a Viewsonic G tablet, rooting it, and using VEGAn-tab to make it usable. I'm fine with the thought of using it over my apartment WiFi connection since I can control that... but I would love to have the option of taking it out to Starbucks or something like that and using the connection there.

That having been said what would be the best way to secure the connection there to prevent someone snagging my Facebook login, Twitter details, or banking information if I was dumb enough to try and log on to a banking website? I can always use my phone (HTC Incredible) to either access those sites or to tether it via rooted WiFi hotspot, but that kind of impacts the usefulness of the tablet.

Ideas? Is there something like Himachi or other VPN tool that I could use? If so, is it really safe to be using Himachi/company owned VPN connections?

 

[kmully]

No one knows of a tool to secure a wifi connection? :|

 

[aweber1nj]

There's the built-in IPSec and PPTP configuration options in the Android OS, and they work (I use them at times). I don't think there's a Himachi client yet, but that doesn't mean there's not another app I don't know about.

You should never do any banking or login to anything from anywhere (wifi, wired or otherwise) without HTTPS indicated on that website. Otherwise, you're protecting only a part of the communication with a VPN (and that's really good, but for banking and sensitive data, it's not enough).

I have a G-Tablet and like it a lot with the custom ROMs. Check the G-Tablet specific forum for more info (and WOOT has it today at an obscenely low price).

-AJ

 

[takeshi]

That having been said what would be the best way to secure the connection there to prevent someone snagging my Facebook login, Twitter details, or banking information if I was dumb enough to try and log on to a banking website?

Your banking site should use HTTPS, as mentioned above.

You can't secure an unsecure WiFi spot unless you have control over the access point. You can certainly VPN but you have to VPN to something on the other end. You can't just VPN to the access point.