While I was writing the previous post, I came across this:

I got hacked mid-air while writing an Apple-FBI story

A journalist, working on a story, was shocked to have a fellow passenger quote back to him emails he had written while using the onboard network. It changed his mind about the “nothing to hide” argument that argues privacy and encryption aren’t a big deal so why make such a fuss about it. (You can likely guess my opinion on that.)

A couple of weeks ago I finally paid for wifi on a flight, mostly to check it out. And the very first thing I did was make sure I could turn on my VPN. Just as on any public network.

Now I’m not always the most diligent about ensuring no unencrypted communications leak out, but I try. Sometimes I forget to shut down apps, and they send and receive data before the VPN finishes comes up. That’s where I need to try harder. Turning off wifi before closing the laptop is also part of it. (I could configure my machine to block anything not using the VPN, but that is annoying when I’m home.)

Now what I don’t know is what is visible when I’m connected to the aircraft’s access point but don’t have a real Internet connection. I do that a lot to check the flight status, but without actual Internet there’s no way to enable my VPN. Other applications may be trying to send data anyway.

There’s a smaller group of possible snoopers on an airplane, but aside from that it’s no different from any other public network. That’s an important point to remember.

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