Public wifi. How do you prefer to protect your info?

[charles052]

Hitting the road again next month and will be taking laptop. I used to run Private Tunnel when it ran Windows 7 whenever I ordered stuff online or had sensitive things to do and I didn't want anyone hacking my signal. But since I switched my lappy to Kubuntu, the Private Tunnel app is gone. So, now I'm looking for something new or a way to easily use Private Tunnel again.

That said, how do you guys encrypt/protect your info on public Wifi?

[Snowhog]

I simply recognize the risks I take when operating on a wifi connection other than my own. As to online purchases, I use, when offered as an option, PayPal, which I have set up to utilize a credit card that is not associated with my personal bank accounts. That way, if for some off chance, my data were to be compromised, only the credit card account is affected, which has Federal protection; notify the Credit Card company of questionable/fraudulent charges and I'm protected.

[claydoh]

There are plenty of VPN providers out there, and quite a lot support Linux - it seems that the ones that have their own client software often don't have one for us Penguin types. All the good ones provide setup instructions for Linux users (not a difficult task at all, imo); some also provide scripts to set up the connection info.


However, trolling the Private Tunnel site brings this:
https://www.privatetunnel.com/index....e-devices.html
https://www.privatetunnel.com/index....d-profile.html

You can get the .ovpn file for your account, and the Network Manager can import that and add the connection.

If you run 13.10 with the new Network Management widget, it is pretty straightforward



As an aside, I find it amusing that these folks consider OpenVPN to be proprietary software , though the overall statement is true.

[SteveRiley]

That said, how do you guys encrypt/protect your info on public Wifi?

The important stuff is likely already protected. Web browser sessions with banks, Paypal, Amazon checkout, and so on are protected by HTTPS. If you're worried about someone intercepting your clear-text traffic, then a VPN, like Claydoh mentioned, is the way to go. You could even set up one of your own, and I'd recommend OpenVPN.

As an aside, I find it amusing that these folks consider OpenVPN to be proprietary software , though the overall statement is true.

"Proprietary?" Hardly. It's licensed under GPLv2 and the source is fully open. It builds an SSL/TLS tunnel directly on the transport layer and relies heavily on the OpenSSL libraries. It isn't an HTTPS VPN, which would suffer from a bad phenomenon called TCP-over-TCP meltdown. For this reason, it's better to run OpenVPN over UDP; you can run it over TCP, but the meltdown problem would surface.

[charles052]

Well, Claydoh, unfortunately, I'm running 12.04 and it's nowhere near as intuitive. But I managed to find me a nice guide on the Ubuntu forums and I had to even modify that. But I got my VPN working just fine just the way I wanted it. Basically, I had to import the .opvn file into the network manager, then I had to extract each key from the file using Kate, rename them, move them to the /etc/openvpn folder, adjust some settings, and viola, done! Worked like a charm.

Think I should write up a guide in case anyone else would like to set up a vpn with Private Tunnel?