This is what I had originally thought that on public wifi the threat would be people using the same network but I was told by a IT person that anyone from the wider internet can get into your device through a public wifi. Technically he is right but like you said the companies offering public wifi are most likely behind their router firewall.Most people are behind some kind of NAT router regardless (assuming they're not using IPv6, which is a whole other kettle of fish), in the form of their home router / wireless AP. The same goes for public wifi, the bigger concern there is whether it's running client-isolation (aka the threat model isn't the wider internet, it's other users on the same wireless network / inside the NAT-ed LAN).That means most people (their computers that is) are not exposed to the internet unless you use public wifi which in that case you don't know what you are connecting to.
Personally I think the internet is bad (not everything) but overall not good for most users (at least from what I've seen).These days most people really don't care of course, they have no idea how any of this works and all they want is to use email and google/social media/[insert FANG service here] like a good little sheep.
Statistics: Posted by DebianMan — 2024-07-13 14:10