SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the we-are-really-security-conscious dept.
According to The Register Microsoft plans to enable their WIFI Sense feature on all versions of Windows 10 by default.
WIFI Sense has been lurking on Windows Phones since version 8.1.
A Windows 10 feature, Wi-Fi Sense, smells like a significant security risk: it shares access to password-protected Wi-Fi networks with the user's contacts. So giving a wireless password to one person grants access to everyone who knows them. That includes their Outlook.com (nee Hotmail) contacts, Skype contacts and, with an opt-in, their Facebook friends.
With every laptop running Windows 10 in the business radiating access, the security risk is significant. A second issue is that by giving Wi-Fi Sense access to your Facebook contacts, you are giving Microsoft a list of your Facebook friends, as well as your wireless passwords.
Microsoft offers a totally ridiculous workaround: you can simply add _optout to the SSID to prevent it from working with WiFi Sense.
Microsoft's page on WIFI Sense hasn't yet made it clear that every Windows 10 computer using WIFI will have the feature on by default. But that page does also include this little gem:
Wi-Fi Sense uses your location to identify open networks near you that it knows about by crowdsourcing.
Where are the lawyers when you need them?
Original Submission
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AndyTheAbsurd on Wednesday July 01 2015, @12:10PM
Oh, MSNB will share wifi passwords - provided your company's MSNB account administrators have set up sharing with their company. This will enable synergy when businesses collaborate on....oh I feel dirty already, I can't finish that joke. Anyway, the MSNB corporate account will probably be connected to Active Directory just like Office 360 and Lync - I mean "Skype for Business" - is today, so you'll automatically get desktop notifications and shit about it.
And then some enterprising hacker will set up a FB/MSNB bridge system and the whole thing will be pointless.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.