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Hotel WiFi Is Generally More Fun When You're Not Being Watched By The FBI

July 20, 2012 at 9:16 AM | by | Comment (1)

Between exorbitant, unpredictable WiFi fees and the occasional circulating hotel internet virus, you'd think we have enough to worry about when it comes to signing onto the web from our hotel room. But you'd be wrong.

A friend of ours recently spent an evening at a Quaity Inn in California, and when he opened his laptop to join the network, found something that (understandably) made him a little nervous. There, listed above the Quality Inn's two available networks, was another one, which, in all caps, read: "FBI SURVEILLANCE VAN 28".

Not exactly the kind of fans you want waiting outside your hotel. Especially when you consider it might be your internet use itself that they're monitoring.

Our friend provided this caption, after re-visiting his network choices the following day to see if the situation had improved:

"I checked the Wifi network choices this morning and the FBI van is gone from the choices.  The other three choices are still there.  This leads me to believe that it really was an FBI van."

Moral of the story: for total privacy protection at a hotel (or motel, as the case may be), revert back to handwritten correspondence and printed media. The FBI digital watchdogs can't get you if you never logged on in the first place!

[Photo: AW]

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Wi-Fi Names

This is a common tactic amongst road warriors. Give your personal Wi-Fi router a name that will ensure that no-one tries to piggy-back or hack your bandwidth.

I use "virus.exe" or the like.

PaulieD on July 26, 2012 at 8:06 AM #Permalink

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