3 ms·

Wi-Fi Sense in Windows 10: Yes, it shares your keys; no, you shouldn’t be scared

6 points by Artemis2 11y ago

invaliduser 11y ago
The article is pretty scary, actually. It totally misses the main issue with Wifi Sense: I may want to share my wifi password with my friend Joe, but not all of his acquaintances. And it's only a checkbox away for it to be shared almost publicly (some people have thousands of contacts!). There is this issue not mentionned in the article: in a lot of countries, the owner of the internet connection is legally responsible for whatever happens with their connection. Not only in north corea, also in countries like France. Will Microsoft take responsability if someone uses my internet link for illegal activities? Nope, because there will be no way to prove it's not me doing it. There are so many red flags with Wi-fi Sense, it's like Microsoft wants to perpetuate its tradition of pointless features involving security issues. Why Ars Technica published such a misleading article if beyond understanding.
- pwr 11y ago
  I agree. It's silly that the wifi owner has to opt-out of wifi sense. Because it's not like it's already difficult enough for a non-techie to securely configure his access point, no, let's add another thing he has to care/know about. And the way to opt-out is even sillier: you have to append _optout to your SSID. The SSID should not be used to control the clients behaviour imho.
facorreia 11y ago
> When Wi-Fi Sense is fully enabled, it shares most of your Wi-Fi access passwords with all of your Outlook.com, Skype, and Facebook contacts. I'm scared.
- creshal 11y ago
  > It's also worth noting that Wi-Fi Sense passwords are stored "in an encrypted file on a Microsoft server." Yep.
spdustin 11y ago
Is there a method for determining if given SSID/MAC combination is in the database, and requesting an opt out? I'm assuming MAC addresses come into play, given that adding "_optout" to the end of the SSID works to opt out but can take some time to propagate. It also seems to suggest that changing the SSID won't invalidate the wifi-sense credentials used for your access point.

6 points by Artemis2 11y ago

The article is pretty scary, actually. It totally misses the main issue with Wifi Sense: I may want to share my wifi password with my friend Joe, but not all of his acquaintances. And it's only a checkbox away for it to be shared almost publicly (some people have thousands of contacts!). There is this issue not mentionned in the article: in a lot of countries, the owner of the internet connection is legally responsible for whatever happens with their connection. Not only in north corea, also in countries like France. Will Microsoft take responsability if someone uses my internet link for illegal activities? Nope, because there will be no way to prove it's not me doing it. There are so many red flags with Wi-fi Sense, it's like Microsoft wants to perpetuate its tradition of pointless features involving security issues. Why Ars Technica published such a misleading article if beyond understanding.

pwr 11y ago
I agree. It's silly that the wifi owner has to opt-out of wifi sense. Because it's not like it's already difficult enough for a non-techie to securely configure his access point, no, let's add another thing he has to care/know about. And the way to opt-out is even sillier: you have to append _optout to your SSID. The SSID should not be used to control the clients behaviour imho.

facorreia 11y ago

> When Wi-Fi Sense is fully enabled, it shares most of your Wi-Fi access passwords with all of your Outlook.com, Skype, and Facebook contacts. I'm scared.

creshal 11y ago
> It's also worth noting that Wi-Fi Sense passwords are stored "in an encrypted file on a Microsoft server." Yep.

spdustin 11y ago

Is there a method for determining if given SSID/MAC combination is in the database, and requesting an opt out? I'm assuming MAC addresses come into play, given that adding "_optout" to the end of the SSID works to opt out but can take some time to propagate. It also seems to suggest that changing the SSID won't invalidate the wifi-sense credentials used for your access point.