“In a mostly free society we can be sure of at least one thing. Everyone is out to get your money,” Jack D. Miller writes for Mac360.
“That also means those of nefarious character with unscrupulous technical skills are trying day and night to hack their way into your Mac,” Miller writes. “It’s bad enough when your Mac is hooked up to a home or office network, but it gets worse when you and your trusty Mac hit the road to use public Wi-Fi. Here’s a way to protect yourself.”
“What does Cloak do? It creates a secure connection between your Mac and wherever you connect on the internet,” Miller writes. “It still uses the public Wi-Fi, but the secure connection makes it nearly impossible for the aforementioned thieves to hack into your Mac.”
Read more in the full article here.
It’s just a VPN, which establishes a second network stack from your device to their service. Your hardware is still on the unprotected Wi-Fi.. What’s to prevent the hacker from attacking your OS on the primary connection? You will still have port 80, and whichever other service ports open.
How does this compare using Cisco Any Connect, where, let’s say, your business already has VPN services?
At $10/month it may be OK if you must use public WiFi for your laptop, but if you just want security, turn off WiFi and use cell service for free when on your iPhone.
Using a Hotspot connection through my iPhone for a laptop or iPad is a lot more versatile as far as I am concerned and I can share it with others who are with me, though it is more expensive than Cloak.
Well, with T-Mobile, wifi sharing is included in the plan. So is unlimited data. So, I rarely ever think about using public WiFi. About the only time I have to think is if I’m concerned with my iPhone battery. WiFi sharing accelerates drain, so if it is the evening and I know I’m going to need the phone later on (to navigate back home), I might consider hooking onto the local public WiFi instead.
Now that I have 10gb free data and hotspot I will stick to that for my mac when travelling.
With the mobile hotspot on the iPhone you can connect via USB thus charging your phone and getting data to your mac.
When I’m driving and using the navigator I charge the phone.
The worse case of battery drain is walking around or travelling. Shutting down services can help but some are useful in those situations. Backup chargers are the best way to keep power in your phone when away from main electricity.
The VPNs I have used are many times so slow as to often make them unusable. HotSpot Shield comes to mind as one of them.