{"id":815,"date":"2008-06-17T21:45:49","date_gmt":"2008-06-18T07:45:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/?p=815"},"modified":"2008-06-17T21:45:49","modified_gmt":"2008-06-18T07:45:49","slug":"viral-ssid-free-public-wifi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/2008\/06\/17\/viral-ssid-free-public-wifi\/","title":{"rendered":"Viral SSID: Free Public WiFi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/freepublicwifi-225x300.gif\" alt=\"\" title=\"FreePublicWiFi Viral SSID\" width=\"225\" height=\"300\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-816\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/freepublicwifi-225x300.gif 225w, https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/freepublicwifi.gif 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px\" \/><br \/>\nI was standing outside of an office building the other day waiting for a friend to join me for lunch. While standing there, I decided to see if I could latch onto the somewhat nearby (ok, half a block) Starbucks Hotspot while waiting (definitely a long shot). Instead, I saw yet another instance of the viral SSID called <em>Free Public WiFi<\/em>. I often see these in airports and conferences. I think it was the first time I saw it standing on a sidewalk area. It is not usually dangerous in the sense that it is a malicious attempt to snare your wireless signal. It is more of an indicating of someone with a Microsoft Windows based notebook with Wireless Zero Configuration turned on. You can read more about this at the WLANBook.com site&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wlanbook.com\/free-public-wifi-ssid\/\">\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Free Public WiFi\u00e2\u20ac\u009d SSID<\/a><\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll note that the &#8220;Free Public WiFi&#8221; connection is an ad-hoc one (client-to-client, not an access point). WLANBook.com also has an explanation for that oddball looking <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wlanbook.com\/hpsetup-wifi-ssid\/\">ad-hoc hpsetup SSID<\/a>. Oy! \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was standing outside of an office building the other day waiting for a friend to join me for lunch. While standing there, I decided to see if I could latch onto the somewhat nearby (ok, half a block) Starbucks Hotspot while waiting (definitely a long shot). Instead, I saw yet another instance of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[78,77,72],"class_list":["post-815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mobile-devices","tag-ssid","tag-viral-ssid","tag-wifi"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/ppKRG-d9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/815\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mobileviews.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}