I went to a computer meeting not too long ago. Where the attendees were some 250 computer specialists. And, I was amazed at what happened there.

One of the vendors had hired a beautiful woman to hand out USB memory cards with their corporate logo on it. Of course, almost everyone took one- some took two. (I admit that I took none.)

It’s a great advertising gimmick. One we’ve used at a variety of medical and biological shows to get folks to remember our name. However, what we did had two different salient characteristics:

1. We didn’t hire a model to hand out the USB memory sticks.
2. We didn’t put anything on the memory sticks.

Now that I’ve listed item 2, let me explain. For years, Microsoft has handed our USB memory sticks at a variety of events. Sure they had 1, 2, 4, 16 GB of memory. But, they also had “junk mail” from Microsoft on the cards. To let us know the new products or services Microsoft had available.

Almost the same thing was done by the state of Michigan when it was trying to convince us to open up an office there. (To be honest, I have used that particular stick as the memory card to hold the rough draft of my books or new revisions to my books for nearly a decade now.)

Which brings up the big issue. What happened at the computer conference? What can happen to you?

Those free toys? Did you ever consider it just takes 10 minutes for a cybercriminal to add ransomware to those chips? So, for about $500, these criminals can infect 5000 chips. And, if only 10% of the folks plug it into their computer, they can get a return of almost 1000X or 5000X for just 10 minutes of work. (The $ 500 includes both the  young model for 8 hours and the production of the chips.). Not bad- for them. For you- it’s horrendous.

Well, the same thing applies to those free wi-fi sites you use at the local coffee shop or conferences. Avast, the anti-virus/anti-malware company just proved it with a little experiement recently.

Basically, they set up a slew of fake Wi-Fi Sites. And, since this test was effected at the RNC (Republican National Convention), many of the names matched folks expectations. I VOTE HILLARY! FREE INTERNET. Or, I VOTE TRUMP! FREE INTERNET. A few less obvious fakes such as ATTWifi at GOP and Google Starbucks. Just to see who would bite. 1200 of the folks present at the conference did. Of those 1200 or so folks, 68.3% were more than willing to share their identifies.

The problem for the rest of us is that making a fake Wi-Fi hotspot is a breeze. You can create one with your phone or your laptop. And, because people have come to expect free Wi-Fi everywhere, they don’t even consider that this may be the wisest decision to hook up. That’s even more likely if the site title matches the event concept we are attending.

And, once you link into these sites, you are doomed. Many of these sites copy all the traffic between your computer and the internet. And, since most folks don’t use VPN or encrypted traffic, the data is inherently readable. (Don’t get too cocky- even if it is encrypted, much of the data is still easy to cipher.)

That’s not all the damage that can be done. The hacker can access your files, add malware to your computer, do pretty much anything they want. And, you will only know about it when it’s way too late.

Just like at the RNC. 38.7% of the users accessed their Facebook accounts, 13.1% hit up Yahoo mail, 17.6% used gMail, and 13.8% were on chat apps (WeChat, Skype, WhatsApp). (Interestingly, 0.24% of those using the fake Wi-Fi grabbed some pornography.)

Your choice to be safe? Buy your own hotspot- so you control everything. (Don’t forget that most of our cell phones have the ability to form hotspots- and 4G service is often much faster than those free Wi-Fi anyway.) Or, if you use public Wi-Fi, opt for those sites that don’t require a login, actually belong to the site you are visiting (that means CHECK with the employees- and hope that one of them is not the WiFi criminal) – or use the public Wi-Fi from your home carrier (like Comcast, TimeWarner, or Cox), where your data is at least somewhat more secure.

Oh- NEVER hit up a financial site like your bank account, investment account, or credit card provider while using these WiFi sites. Never let your computer automatically log into any public Wi-Fi, either.

Of course, using VPN (virtual private network) shields traffic from your device to the WiFi and back, which makes hacking much more problematic.

Caveat emptor.