Windows 10 May Share Your Wi-Fi Password with Facebook

If you're taking up Microsoft on its offer of a free upgrade to Windows 10, you should know that the new operating system has a feature, called Wi-Fi Sense, that automatically shares your Wi-Fi passwords with others.

When Wi-Fi Sense is enabled, anyone you have in your Skype, Outlook or Hotmail contacts lists — and any of your Facebook friends — can be granted access to your Wi-Fi network as long as they're within range. Microsoft added this feature to save users' time and hassle, but as independent security blogger Brian Krebs put it, some security experts see it as "a disaster waiting to happen."

Krebs and others worry about the potential for strangers or untrustworthy friends being given access to users' home Wi-Fi networks. Microsoft has tried to reassure them by pointing out that you have to agree to enable Wi-Fi Sense every time you join a new network, that those people to whom you grant network access can't pass along that access to yet more people, and that the feature doesn't share an actual password, but rather an encrypted version of it.

Despite the safeguards, the issue is nonetheless dangerous for those users, and there are many of them, who agree to everything their computers ask of them. If they agree to share Wi-Fi Sense with their Facebook friends, then, yep, all of their Facebook friends will be given access to their networks. (We've already encountered this request from Windows 10, which didn't really explain what the feature entailed.)

Wi-Fi Sense makes sense if you're visiting a friend and don't want to enter a long string of random characters to get onto his or her network. But have you pruned your contacts lists down to just the people you trust? Are all of your Facebook friends really your friends? Probably not. Most people have many contacts or Facebook friends whom they barely know — would you really trust your Wi-Fi password with your second cousin's boyfriend, or that guy in the neighborhood who once fixed your toilet?


Windows 10 May Share Your Wi-Fi Password with Facebook

The other problem is that Wi-Fi Sense lets you share access to more networks than just your own. You can share access to any network that you got onto the old-fashioned way — by typing in the password. Wi-Fi Sense doesn't distinguish between your home network, your office network or your grandmother's home network. If you typed in the password, they're all fair game.

Personally, we're going to ask that people never enable Wi-Fi Share if they bring a Windows 10 laptop or tablet — or a handset running Windows Phone 8, which also has the feature — into our house. We keep our password, which is somewhat complicated, taped to our home router for anyone who needs it.

Once Wi-Fi Share-enablers have typed that password into their Windows 10 devices, all of their friends can access our home network if they're within range. Even though we trust our friends and family, we haven't spent time with all of their contacts and Facebook friends, and we have no idea whether they're trustworthy.

How to stop Wi-Fi Sense sharing
If you want to disable Wi-Fi Sense on your computer and wipe its memory, that's not difficult. Go to Settings, select "Network & Internet" and then click on "Wi-Fi." Select "Manage Wi-Fi Settings," scroll to the Wi-Fi Sense section, and turn off each and every feature.

But that won't stop people who already have access to your network from sharing that access with others. You could just change your network password, but as soon as you share that password with anyone else, the problem starts all over again.

Microsoft offers a permanent solution to this problem, but it's somewhat insane. You have to change your wireless network's name, or SSID, so that it ends with the characters "_optout". So if it's called "joe-network", it'll have to be adjusted to "joe-network_optout".


Windows 10 May Share Your Wi-Fi Password with Facebook

There's another way to avoid this: Buy a wireless router that allows the creation of a guest network that has Internet access, but no access to other devices on the network. Many high-end routers already have this feature. Set up a guest network with an easy password, or no password at all, and sleep easy.

Now, you'll never have to worry whether that guy named Bob you met at the holiday party at the office you worked at seven years ago can lurk on your network.

https://www.yahoo.com/tech/s/windows-10-may-share-wi-164057617.html

 

It gets every day better

 

Oh man, I have no words. We could return to the "golden for pirates" unencrypted Wifis era.

 

Lol i said in previous post about windows it's better with name ''windows spy 10''

 

Stuff like this is great publicity for Apple.

 

Totally agree.. and we all know MAC users are absolutely not sharing anything with apple.. right?? (put your usual irony face here)

 

just watching some MMA on my buddies cable... from the other side of the world lol.
btw, cat your out of peanutbutter muaaa haa haaaa
all joking aside I like how articstorm put it in another post about using a combination of primary/alt OS's. its time to brush up on my linux commands. Zeus, this is great publicity for Linux not apple

 

...and the best is yet to come! (B. Obama).

 

They told it about half year ago on the main presentation. If you watched it of course. People applauded them. Please read the manual, watch and read all stuff that you missed and stop this "shocking news" please.

 

I'm acting like person who really don't understand what is wrong with fact of wi-fi sharing. I don't know about you but my bandwith is 100/100. And my tax is 6 dollars per month for unlimited traffic. If someone will check his social profile or mail with my internet - okay. It's not a big deal. Even if he will watch pron - okay. It doesn't affect my bw. I don't know any mobile device that can eat all my bw. And i have firewall. So I really don't understand this "sensation". Guy from alabama will know my wifi password (i actually don't have password but lets continue...). He will save it, then he will go to buy flying tickets. Then he will overcome 100 000+ miles just to use my wifi? - Okay. I will even make him some tea. Not every day i have opportunity to meet person who come to me from the ass of the world just because i have free wifi. I have another 20+ free wifi without password near my house. So seems like i'm not the only one who are not making tragedy from wifi sharing.

 

@DanielFaraday,

You obviously didn`t got the point... It is not about You, stealing of bandwidth, or any economic repercussion.
It is about how fucked up these new windows are, it is about how unshamefully M.soft spits all these "new" rules and contracts, right in Your face...
At the end, it is much more than just about Windows and msoft...

 

Exactly Rhodes, its about adding these features with people ticking 'agree boxes' without even understanding what they are agreeing too or having there computer automatically sharing their info without knowing.

I use windows and will continue too but like you said its all the companies, microsoft, apple, google, facebook sapping our info without the basic user knowing or understanding

 

They just disclose some thing that they did, doing right now and will do always. It's not a news for anyone who have 120+ iq. Even their privacy agreement not new. You just didn't read it earlier. Btw, every banking privacy system working with the same way.

Yes. It's not about how bad is MS. It's about the whole system. So why people angry only when it comes to MS? Why noone create topic like "my bank will disclose all my transactions in response to FBI demands in case of my financial crimes. What a bastards!!"?

 

Not everyone on this planet has an iq over 120

exactly! ... but You have to start somewhere, do You ???
so why the cynical reply than ?

 

An obsessive desire to get people to think.

 

beware of Your desires

 

Now imagine that somebody use your wifi to download child porn.. or to try to attack a site.. or use carded info to get stuff.. or to harass someone in the social networks.... would you make him some tea?

 

For traffic i have connection history. No content - no crime. I will be able to prove my innocence.

I have firewall.

At first he needs to get it.

What a crime. Nazi, nuclear bombing of japan, 9/11 was nothing against trolls in facebook.

depending on the situation.

 

wouldn't be easier to just turn off the wifi sharing feature?

You know the motto... assholes are like opinions.. everybody has one in the end... wait... was in that order....??