China, Iran, Starbucks...

If you are not concerned about using open wi-fi, you should be.  Why?  Watch this talk from Moxie Marlinspike at DefCon.

I normally run encrypted VPN’s at places like Starbucks to reduce the privacy risks of open wi-fi and an untrusted network.  However, in the past couple weeks I have noticed normal VPN connections are being blocked at Starbucks.

Fortunately, this can be worked around by running a Stealth VPN which still works nicely.


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Stealth VPN’s are designed for users in countries where internet access is heavily monitored, blocked and censored.

The inability to set up a normal VPN at Starbucks seems to have come about at the same time as Starbucks announcement that they were blocking porn on public wi-fi.  I spend a lot of time working at Starbucks.  I have seen a lot of weird stuff at Starbucks.  I have never, ever seen anyone viewing porn at Starbucks.

Is Starbucks going to force the average customer to risk compromising their online privacy to address a strawman non-issue created by Enough Is Enough?