On the one hand there is the municipal public "Free Wi-Fi", with a wireless network made available free of charge by the civic administration to any citizen. On the other hand, there are at least 123 other networks in the city considered "open", left voluntarily or carelessly with passwords that are too fragile (or even without a password), from which anyone can connect to the web via PC, mobile phone or tablet. A risk for the owners of these lines, given that in the case of computer crimes the only trace that will remain in memory will be that modem (or rather the IP address of the modem) from which the cybercriminal connected.
The risk map
But if in the case of the municipal network the system records the hardware address (the so-called Mac address) of the device used for the connection, also storing the traffic data generated by the users, in the case of "open" or "fragile" private networks the danger, in case of violations of the law, is all for the season ticket holder. Among other things, just download a simple "App" on your mobile phone to have the exact map of Cagliari's Wi-Fi networks to which you can connect with a simple click. Some have the password already indicated, others don't even need to write it.
All things considered, according to the updated list (as of yesterday), there are 52 lines available in the capital, while another 71 are private ones which also transmit outside buildings. Then, another 23 are indicated which are accessible but with unstable lines, therefore not recommended for long navigation.
Dangers for families
But the dangers of not having protected Wi-Fi can also come from IT experts, if not even actual hackers. There are many scams that can pass through fragile wireless networks: a pirate could intercept encrypted traffic and copy personal information and credit card numbers (so-called Sniffing), remotely control the home PC and every device (transforming them into zombies of a Botnet), or it could redirect the user's traffic to a dangerous server (the Man-in-the-middle, the man in the middle), leading to actual identity theft or even cyber attacks (DDoS, or Distributed Denial-of-Service), transforming hacked devices into tools to bomb servers, thus making them inaccessible. In short, risk is always lurking and we need to be careful.
