This morning at the Airport, last night at the restaurant where I had dinner and today during FOWA: everywhere I go (where there is a little crowd) when I open my laptop I see that damned “Free Public WiFi” network trying to seduce me to connect to it.
They are everywhere!
And they never work, obviously.
But what DO they do and what do they have to gain by being everywhere?
Is it a bug? Or a Windows feature?
Or both?
Maybe it is a virus? A virus that sets itself up as a Free hotspot and then jumps to unsuspecting clients and hatches there and then sets up another hotspot?
That must be it. It IS a conspiracy!
I think it is the beginning of Skynet!
Or an alien invasion!!
I’m not paranoid, it is just that “Free Public WiFi” is out to get me!!!
(Okay, it actually IS a Windows bug. Microsoft Windows: giving us our daily dose of fun, bugs, viruses and crashes!)
I get something like WimiHotspot all the time on windows not sure what it is.
I accidentally clicked that link earlier. Not sure what happened, but I feel err.. dirty..
You are not the only one seeing this networks everywhere. But i haven’t got a clue what it is.
it’s the old ad-hoc propagation problem with windows that occurs when you do not disable ad hoc networking on on your windows PC.
By default after you connect to a WiFi network when next you enable your adaptor it will try to connect to that network if you isn’t able to find a network your machine starts sending beacons for an ad hoc network with the SSID of the last network you connected to.
Someone somewhere set up a wifi hotspot with free public wifi as the SSID and subsequently windows PCs that connected to the network started broadcasting this SSID as an ad-hoc network themselves … other people attempted to connect (as you might) not realising it was an ad hoc network and then if their machines did not have ad hoc networks disabled they became propagators of the same SSID.
I would love to find the original AP that started this little viral joke :)
Move to HK and the free wifi becomes a reality- it’s everywhere! Except starbucks.
It is the first cross platform virus??? :-)
I just think the irony is great: this is discussing a Windows bug, and the screenshot preview is from a Mac…
I would hesitate to call it a virus as the effect that is transmitted has no additional detrimental effect on the host… it’s more an anomaly that has viral propagation
It is explained here. It is a Windows Feature/Bug: http://billkosloskymd.typepad.com/wirelessdoc/2008/01/free-public-wi.html
yes that might work. On the other hand: there are lots of viruses that do nothing more than spread from computer to computer. Either way, it is annoying…