A customer recently asked me about the security of using free wifi in places like coffee shops and burger restaurants etc. In essence, using your laptop in such a place and using their free wifi is reasonably risk free – with one exception that I can think of.

If you use Microsoft networking at home to share files and printers and the like, typically across a wireless network of your own, you will have a common “workgroup” across your various PCs and laptops etc. The default workgroup name that is provided by windows is “MSHOME” and understandably many people never change this.  This is fine all the time that you are just at home, as if your wifi is secured then nobody can see your shared workgroup.

However….  With free public wifi access areas, you could of course be sharing that network with anybody else.  And if they have the same workgroup as you then it is possible that they might be able to access any files that you have shared for network access on your laptop.

To avoid this possibility, alter any workgroup set on your laptops and other PCs at home to something other than the default, something specific to you.  And this will minimise the chances of strangers spying on any shared files you may then have on your laptop when using free public wifi.