Protect Yourself From Firesheep Attacks in Public Wi-Fi Networks

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Firesheep attacks pose a serious threat to your privacy if you are using your laptop at local coffee shops and on college campuses. A Firefox add-on has been downloaded thousands upon thousands of times. This means that anyone who accesses a password-protected site  Fortinet España    can instantly gain access to it. This is dangerous stuff considering how much information is stored on web-based servers. Protecting yourself should be your top priority. Because the security measures they use are not the same as those you'll find at your financial institution, social networking sites are often the most vulnerable. This may not cause panic but it can still expose your personal information.

You should be nervous about Firesheep, because you never know what they'll do if they get access to your social media mailbox. To avoid being attacked by public Wi-Fi networks, a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a good option. A VPN subscription is usually inexpensive and can provide secure, private access to the Internet regardless of which Wi-Fi network it may be.

This hacking style is also known as "sidejacking" and can cause stress when you go to a Starbucks to log into your Facebook account. Although you are concerned, it is a good sign that not all is lost. VPNs encrypt your browsing session and keep your sensitive information safe from "data sniffers", such as Firesheep.

Firesheep was created by Eric Butler and works in the Firefox web browser. Firesheep allows hackers to view everything you see while surfing the Internet by simply clicking "double-click" The browser extension was originally created to demonstrate how vulnerable these sites were to cyber-attacks. It became extremely popular in just a few hours. Hundreds of thousands of hackers around the world will search for ways to exploit it against Wi-Fi novices whenever someone creates something like this.