Are these the "Ten Steps to Public Hotspot Wireless Privacy"

Question

From another thread, are these the ten steps to public hotspot wireless privacy?

Is this the procecedure for "anonymous" public hot spot privacy?

Find public hot spot (eg use
formatting link
Turn off your wireless transmitter & go to that public hotspot
Change your MAC address to DEADBEEFCAFE (using MacMakeUp freeware)
Change your PC name (using My Computer, Properties, Computer Name)
Change your login ID (always create one for this session only)
Set up your (encrypted?) sandbox (sandboxie or truecrypt freeware)
??? anything else ???
Start your browser sandboxed or on an encrypted disk
When done, turn off your wireless transmitter again.
Return all settings back to normal (non hotspot settings)

Are we safe if we follow these ten easy hotspot steps? If not, what steps would you add to improve hot spot privacy?

Jeff Liebermann · Accepted Answer

Slacker  hath wroth:No.No.No.  Those are the 10 steps to improve your ANONYMITY, not yourprivacy.  They are designed to insure that your laptop will not berecognized, identified, logged, and blocked, probably due to someprevious TOS violation.If you want privacy, the only good way is to run everything through aVPN of some sorts (PPTP, IPSec, SSL).  Anyone sniffing the wireless,the router, or anywhere between your laptop and the VPN server willsee only encrypted traffic.  See list of online VPN services at:

Bill Kearney · Answer

This is stupid.  You'll just run into conflicts with some other nitwittrying to steal wifi access for god knows what idiocy online.

stephen · Answer

this is a multicast MAC addresseven if this was a good idea (and it isnt - as Bill suggests 2 people doingthis simultaneously will at the same hotspot will break various things),good equipment will refuse to talk to a device using a multicast MAC sourceadr, as it is breaking the IEEE 802.3 rules for addressing.and if i ran a hot spot chain and saw this thread, that adr would getblocked universally.

Alfred Einstein · Answer

So pick a different MAC.This one was obviously chosen to be a pun, using hex characters that spelled out something.

FJ Chaney · Answer

Do a google search on DEADBEEFCAFE. It's the "foo" of MAC addresses. It's just a placeholder for whatever MAC address you wish to use. In fact, MacMakeup freeware will automatically pick a random MAC address for you.

It seems you can even choose the MAC manufacturer, e.g., Intel or IBM or Adaptec, or whatever, and it will pick a random MAC address specific for that manufacturer.

Point is, pick your own MAC address and your machine can't be tracked back to your particular MAC. Just pick it BEFORE you waltz up to the wireless hotspot!

Any other advices?

Are these the "Ten Steps to Public Hotspot Wireless Privacy"

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