AVOIDING THE "HONEYPOT"

You're probably wondering what a honeypot has to do with computers right? Well, "honeypot" in the IT world could be a fake website you've been mis-directed to via an open (unsecured) WiFi site.

Say, for example, you live in a large apartment complex. One day, you happen to click on your wireless icon to view available networks and see one that is not secured - so you connect to the open network for Internet access. A large percentage of the time what you'll get is free WiFi (which isn't legal to begin with) and access to the Internet.

But for a small percentage of users, when connected to the open WiFi, you may have been lured to a fake server which mimics a typical DNS server that assigns you a fake IP address, and as you jump from Amazon to Ebay to Online Banking, what you're really doing is being sent to a page(s) on that server which looks exactly like the real thing - only it isn't. The owner of the "Honeypot" can sit back and collect your login ID and Passwords for any of the sites you visit.

So the next time you're sitting in an Internet cafe, coffee shop, or any other location offering free WiFi, look around you - one of the many other laptop users you see may be running a honeypot on you, and if not hosting it on their laptop, they are mis-directing you to their honeypot server hoping to get a foothold on your identity.

MORAL OF THE STORY: Resist the temptation to jump onto an unknown persons "open" WiFi router because you might just be lured into a "Honeypot".