As you may know, anytime you connect to a wireless network, you run the risk of someone “sniffing” your network traffic. Depending on what you are doing on the network such as sending emails or sensitive information (which you really shouldn’t do on a public wireless network anyway), there is the possibility someone could intercept the data. To help protect yourself, check out Hotspot Shield.

From their web site:

Hotspot Shield creates a virtual private network (VPN) between your laptop or iPhone and our Internet gateway. This impenetrable tunnel prevents snoopers and hackers from viewing your email, instant messages, credit card information or anything else you send over the network. Hotspot Shield security application is free to download, employs the latest VPN technology, and is easy to install and use.

The only thing I would be wary of in using this program is you might be subject to having some ads displayed while using it. Their Terms of Service clearly outlines this.

Regardless, the absolute safest thing to do is to avoid working with any sensitive information over the Internet while on a public network.

One thing which has always made me scratch my head is that wireless access points always seem to be more expensive than wireless routers. The range on an access point doesn’t seem to be much of difference, so why not use a wireless router as an access point?

I set this up at work and it was a breeze. Basically all you have to do is plug the router directly into your computer, open the router’s control panel (something like http://192.168.1.1) and tell the router to use DHCP to obtain it’s address.

That’s pretty much it. Of course you will want to apply the appropriate wireless security. If anything gets misconfigured, just reset the router (using the tiny reset button) and start again.