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I'm about to give my sister a usb wireless adaptor for her old laptop, and mostly what she'll use it for is access from unsecured public hotspots, like the library (for at home access I can secure the wireless network myself, with wpa2-psk).

Now, I've read one of the articles linked in this forum about 'cookie hijacking' and it's pretty clear she can't wander onto a hotspot and fire up her MSN email or Messenger IM, which is exactly what she would want to do. Switching her to a fully https-utilizing email address or disabling these services altogether are not options either.

I've seen a couple ads by companies offering personal VPN services for just this situation. So my questions are, is a VPN service the best solution for this hotspot usage situation? And, does anyone here have recommendations on which service to choose? I've seen ads by JWire http://www.jiwire.com/hotspot-helper.htm and also by Witopia http://www.witopia.net/personalmore.html and it's not clear how to choose between them.

Thanks for any comments/suggestions!!

rms

Found a 'free' VPN service also, from Anchorfree http://www.anchorfree.com/hotspot-shield

Here's a review of it: http://www.wi-fiplanet.com/news/article.php/3611816

I tried this out on my machine, and it does appear to work; running the 'shieldsup' tests at grc.com showed different IP addresses and results with it on and off, as did IRC. Ad Banners are added to webpages that you visit, so be aware.

Anyway, I'll try this one out some more. Any comments appreciated!

rms cwsp