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I have often wondered why every time I go hunting for a WiFi connection on my Eee 701 or Laptop, I bring up Free Public WiFi, even though I know my area is not wired for any such thing. What is this odd phantom SSID, some kind of cruel tease? Apparently it appears on all devices. How is such a multi-platform mystery possible…and what does it mean for the fate of our planet?

Well, I recently found a blog post by Zaib Kaleem at WLANBook that reveals the secret of this apparently unattainable network.

Here’s a clue from Zaib…

In reality, this SSID is just one of many viral SSIDs that exist anywhere people are with laptops (almost always Microsoft Windows based laptops). In almost all cases this SSID is not a real WiFi hotspot access point but someone else’s laptop in Ad-Hoc mode advertising this SSID. Why does this SSID always appear and more importantly is it harmful if you connected to this SSID?

Read the rest of the shocking truth in this very informative article, located HERE.

Zealot (468 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

By day a department manager and writer for a major network device vendor...by night Zealot stalks the mean magnetic streets, striking fear into the hearts of bandwidth abusers and theme park mascots. Zealot has been involved with mobile devices for more than a decade now, starting off with dumb phones, moving to PDAs and then to smartphones, notebooks and netbooks with the odd PMP thrown in. Most of his mobile time currently is spent on a Treo Pro, Zune HD, Thinkpad T61, Gigabyte M912M or a Hackintoshed Compaq Mini 704. He proudly groks the Geek community and considers himself a Neo Maxi Zune Dweebie (thanks Will Wheaton!).