Wi-Fi Street Smarts, iPhone Edition
If you use your iPhone to connect to open or public Wi-Fi networks, it’s a good idea to tell the device to forget the wireless network’s name after you’re done using it, as failing to do so could make it easier for snoops to eavesdrop on your iPhone data usage.
For example, if you use your iPhone to connect to an open wireless network called “linksys,” — which happens to be the default, out-of-the-box name assigned to all Linksys home Wi-Fi routers — your iPhone will in the future automatically connect to any Wi-Fi network by that same name.
The potential security and privacy threat here is that an attacker could abuse this behavior to sniff the network for passwords and other sensitive information transmitted from nearby iPhones even when the owners of those phones have no intention of connecting to a wireless network, simply by giving his rogue access point a common name.
