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Pro tip: I was at a conference in Austin and saw a speaker plug his laptop directly into the hotel's public ethernet port.
He said it was fine because he had a firewall, but later that week I read about a major data breach traced back to that exact attack vector. Does anyone still think a basic software firewall is enough for untrusted networks?
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noah9171mo ago
Oh man, my buddy did that at an airport once and his laptop got totally owned. Karen's point about physical damage is so real too, it's just not worth the risk.
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keithwalker2mo ago
Plugging into a public port like that is just asking for trouble.
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karent752mo ago
You're right to be cautious, Keithwalker. People forget the port itself could be damaged or rigged to fry your charging circuit. A cheap data blocker dongle won't stop a physical surge from a messed up outlet. It's less about data theft and more about straight up breaking your phone's power system.
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