The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:
Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.
Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/wifi4eu-citizens
Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)
93k access points run by a government that wants to read all our chats?
Vpns are cheap if that’s an issue
Yeah till they don’t allow VPNs on the network
just like border-free travel
Is this new? If they write this despite recent border checks the analogy has not the intended meaning.
Vpns don’t hide mac addresses from phones that pass the access points.
Vpns don’t hide mac addresses from phones that pass the access points.
Pretty much every phone can use random MAC addresses, so you can’t be tracked that way. Obviously there’s a ton of other ways to achieve that, like via that app.
you think most people will use a VPN?
It’s amost like the EU isn’t a monolith and has various groups opposing each other.
https://wifi4eu.ec.europa.eu/ currently says “The budget of the WiFi4EU initiative is EUR 120 million between 2018 and 2020” and “we propose today to equip every European village and every city with free wireless internet access around the main centres of public life by 2020”
It’s unclear if this project is still being supported and/or expanding, but from the fact that the front page of the website apparently hasn’t been updated in over five years I would guess not. Looking at a few major cities on their map it doesn’t look like they came anywhere near covering the “main centres of public life” in any of them 😢
The reason I posted this was becuase they posted about it themselves on LinkedIn recently, so I am assuming its still a WIP project. https://www.linkedin.com/posts/european-commission_wifi4eu-activity-7359136374895046656-oXYi
It’s almost like going back in time where there was a Fonera hotspot everywhere.
Interestingly, Paris, the first tourist destination in Europe, doesn’t have any of those.
I think the city provides a good number of free hotspots disseminated about the place, but I never really looked into it. Hopefully they’re both safe and convenient, but it’s always hard to tell with those things, especially regarding the safe part.
Interestingly, Paris, the first tourist destination in Europe, doesn’t have any of those.
The wifi4eu map shows a dozen APs inside the Boulevard Périphérique:
but...
looking...
closer...
they’re all in and around a single building 😂
Odd, why didn’t they show here? And the site listed no spots for Paris.
did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too
On startup, the app offers a choice of using it with or without geolocation.
deleted by creator
the github link you attached is to a github user called wifi4eu. Its not related at all to this initative.
apologies, seems like it is. Probably an old repo from way back when it started development then.
I like how they wrote no tracking and then provided tracking link at the end.
Where is there a tracking part in the link provided in the image?
!rmqyhT
I didn’t provide a link with tracking?
