Several Britons agreed to give up their eldest child in return for the use of free wifi, in an experiment to highlight the dangers of public Internet, published on Monday.<\/p>\n
Londoners were asked to agree to terms and conditions as they logged on to use free wifi in a cafe in a busy financial district and at a site close to the houses of parliament.<\/p>\n
The terms included a \u201cHerod clause\u201d, under which the wifi was provided only if \u201cthe recipient agreed to assign their first born child to us for the duration of eternity\u201d.<\/p>\n
In the short period the terms and conditions were live, six people signed up.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs this is an experiment, we will be returning the children to their parents,\u201d said the tech security firm that ran the experiment, F-Secure.<\/p>\n
The experiment was aimed to highlight \u201cthe total disregard for computer security by people when they are mobile\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n
Germany ethical hacking company SySS built the device used in the study: a mobile wifi hotspot small enough to be carried in a handbag for around 200 euros ($254).<\/p>\n
In just 30 minutes, 250 devices connected to the hotspot \u2014 some of them doing so automatically due to their settings.<\/p>\n
The company was able to collect the text of emails they sent, the email addresses of the sender and recipient, and the password of the sender.<\/p>\n
The head of Europol\u2019s European Cybercrime Centre told the study they already had reports of criminals using free wifi to steal personal data.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt best, your device is only leaking information about you \u2013 at worst, your passwords are being spilled into a publicly accessible space\u2026 anybody on the network can see your information,\u201d said F-Secure Security Advisor Sean Sullivan.<\/p>\n
MWEB launches free WiFi in Durban<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Orange trials free WiFi in SA<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n