Private Comunications Corporation
Private Communications Corporation is dedicated to protecting individual privacy and corporate data security online. The company was created by Kent Lawson, after a series of articles appeared in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes and The New York Times about the security vulnerabilities of WiFi HotSpots.
There are currently 24 million known WiFi networks worldwide. Over half are unencrypted, which means that, like an unlocked door, they are completely open to anyone within radio range. This includes virtually all public HotSpots in McDonalds, Starbucks, airports and hotels.
In the United States, 43 million people use public WiFi HotSpots to conduct personal or professional business. Virtually all of these HotSpots carry warnings in their Terms and Conditions which most people agree to without reading.
When staying in hotels, even direct connection to most hotel Local Area Networks (LANs) is vulnerable. LAN technology evolved years ago, for use within organiza- tions, where security was never thought to be a major issue. The result is that most of today’s LANs can be hijacked, and all communication can be easily captured and stored on an unseen laptop.
Hackers and “geeks” are well aware of these problems. Software used to “sniff” WiFi or hijack LANs has been around for years and some has been downloaded from the web hundreds of thousands of times. “How to hack WiFi” has 5,050 videos on YouTube and 4.7 million hits on Google.
