Every time I’ve gone through Pearson in the last few years, I’ve been kept waiting for hours before my flight finally boarded, Then there are the rude US Immigration people and the overpriced food once you get through security. I tried bringing my own food, but US Homeland Security decided it looked tasty so they confiscated it for their lunch.
The only saving grace was the free WiFi, so now I find that they are tracking me when I read boingboing and other sites. Or sending emails to my mother. “Yes we managed to get through security, I retrieved my shoes, now our flight is delayed for four hours.”
I guess the way of the future is free Wifi and being spied upon, or pay for WiFi and maybe you will be spied upon.
When I choose “free” wifi I always wonder what the caveat is. Now I know.
It’s just as easy to passively* track you with paid wifi, too.
(* without cooperation from the wifi provider)
Tru dat. But at least with paid Wifi, I have the theatre of security!
exeunt stage left…
When using free wifi, I usually use a ssh tunnel proxy for my browsing. Not sure how much it helps, but it gives me the warm-n-fuzzies…
For the last X years, I’ve been using a VPN service whenever I’m not on my home network (and sometimes even then). Having been the person running kismet (or wireshark or any variation thereof) to grab data out of the sky just to see what’s floating around, I now see everyone else on the wireless network as a potential attacker and I try to secure my communications accordingly.
I now disable wifi on my devices whenever I can. This technology seems insecure at every level, and I’m not just talking about wep 
By design, your devices broadcast the access points they know, giving anyone listening the list of the places you’ve been to.
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