Funny article on the perils of free wi-fi

[Ftb]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/29/londoners-wi-fi-security-herod-clause

Londoners give up eldest children in public Wi-Fi security horror show

F-Secure’s ‘Herod clause’ experiment aims to show the dangers of insecure public hotspot connections

[cooper]

Odd that they consider this a "danger of public wifi". The core problem here is that people don't read license agreements.

You're at position A. You want to get to position B. You know you can just walk there - it's only 5 paces. However some lawyer slime is holding up a document saying "To walk from A to B you have to sign this document". What would you do? Turns out, most people would just sign the piece of paper, spit in the lawyer's face (it's just a good habit to have) and walk to B. If that paper says you just gave up your house, well, we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

When they reported this article here in .nl on the radio the person interviewed pointed out that research was done that showed that if you were to read all the EULAs you're consenting to, you'd spend 53 days of the year, every year, doing nothing but reading legalese.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Cooper

[Ftb]

I wonder if this could be used in an evil portal application to remove the legal concerns of MITM attacks? Put a nice little disclaimer stating all traffic is monitored and recorded and encryption methods broken?

As you stated, people won't read the disclaimer, few people do.

[cooper]

Research like this is showing that people simply look for the 'go away' button which probably means that in court you're going to have a hard time enforcing the rules stipulated in the EULA. Also, it is my understanding that a contract, when found to be counter the local law, is null and void. So if you sign away your soul to the devil, but the IRS already owns your ass, not even the devil can trump the IRS.