The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:
Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.
Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/wifi4eu-citizens
Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)
Interestingly, Paris, the first tourist destination in Europe, doesn’t have any of those.
I think the city provides a good number of free hotspots disseminated about the place, but I never really looked into it. Hopefully they’re both safe and convenient, but it’s always hard to tell with those things, especially regarding the safe part.
Anyone happens to know if this would be secure? I mean, I’ve heard of being wary connecting to public WiFi. What guarantees someone won’t connect to a WiFi4EU network belonging to Shady McHoodie in the corner of a coffee shop instead of an official network? Do usual security / privacy recommendations apply? Would a VPN be recommended for said network? (I presume VPNs are good for public WiFi. Not sure if that is indeed the case).
Tricky thing is, you may think you’re connecting to a legit network, but anyone can set their network name to a legit-sounding one. Mr. McHoodie could have a WiFi4EU, a Free-Airport-WiFi, a GFOTYBUCKS-WiFi. I assume at least once connected, your device won’t be fooled into auto-connecting to a similarly named network
Local municipalities applied for a voucher worth €15,000, which covers the costs of installation of a Wi-Fi hotspot in the town, functioning for a minimum period of three years. All local residents and visitors of the successful municipalities are now able to access the internet freely.
In America, this means that they would work for 3 years, and then some would start breaking until smaller local governments got more federal money for maintenance. Does Europe operate differently?
The programs of this type are still time limited with plan for extension usually, and programs that work well usually does get that extension. The participating municipalities may need to reapply for more funding but that’s usually not complicated
Not available on F-Droid. 🤔
None of the 30 replies so far mentions source code (except mine, but it’s 7 yo and there’s no builds) 🤷
Locations in Belgium: 3549
Locations in the Netherlands: 102
😳
I like how they wrote no tracking and then provided tracking link at the end.
Where is there a tracking part in the link provided in the image?
!rmqyhT
I didn’t provide a link with tracking?
Not only are they monitoring everything you view in their network,
but you have to install their app on your device.Good to see Exodus giving it a pass, but if it’s not open source it’s still something to be wary of.
I literally can’t think of any good reason for the app to be required, a splash page that you log in to is more than sufficient.On connecting to the free Wi-Fi network for the first time, you will be redirected to a secure login page (a captive portal). You will be able to sign in with a simple click-to-connect functionality.
Govs already have almost full access to local ISP so what’s new?
The app is just a map to see the hotspots, you don’t need it to connect to them.
You’re right, I was just going on the post saying “With the WiFi4EU app, you can access…”, implying that you need the app to access it. But on their webpage it spells it out more clearly:
On connecting to the free Wi-Fi network for the first time, you will be redirected to a secure login page (a captive portal). You will be able to sign in with a simple click-to-connect functionality.
93k access points run by a government that wants to read all our chats?
It’s amost like the EU isn’t a monolith and has various groups opposing each other.
Can they actually if the chats run via HTTPS? Isn’t the whole point that they can’t read any data that’s going through but instead only what server it’s going through? As long as it goes over an encrypted connection, but I think all of our chats use encrypted connection nowadays
Vpns are cheap if that’s an issue
just like border-free travel
Is this new? If they write this despite recent border checks the analogy has not the intended meaning.
Vpns don’t hide mac addresses from phones that pass the access points.
That tracking is done in a much more effective and capillary way by tracking cell towers. I think MAC tracking is a much better option, assuming there are enough of these APs to track.
Vpns don’t hide mac addresses from phones that pass the access points.
Pretty much every phone can use random MAC addresses, so you can’t be tracked that way. Obviously there’s a ton of other ways to achieve that, like via that app.
Yeah till they don’t allow VPNs on the network
you think most people will use a VPN?
93k may seem a lot, but I’m on holiday in EU right now and the closest hotspot is 40 minutes away. Still impressive initiative, I hope it gets more coverage.
I just checked the map and it looks like they put these hotspots all around of my city to the countryside, but none inside the city
It’s almost like going back in time where there was a Fonera hotspot everywhere.
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The app is just a map, the WiFi connection uses a standard SSID and login portal.
the github link you attached is to a github user called wifi4eu. Its not related at all to this initative.
apologies, seems like it is. Probably an old repo from way back when it started development then.
The app is just a map of availability
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