Assistance with wifi

[manuel1980]

Reaching out to all,

Just recently picked up a toshiba satellite laptop and sierra wireless broadband U595 from Sprint. I know that wifi is prone to vulnerability due to interception of satellite signals to broadband cards or wireless networks. I'm trying to avoid from being a target to interceptors and such malicious attacks.

My setup right now has mcaffee AV with everything turned on, I've got windows firewall currently active. Spybot, Adaware, and zonelabs. I can't run zonelab because of mcaffee though. What would you recommend from this perspective in terms of disactivating mcaffee to use zonelabs? then i would be left with no AV active.

Sprint states that encryption is turned on as soon as you plug in the broadband card, I don't know if I fully trust that statement there. I would like to have the extra security. I know that there is a such thing as VPN and WEP2, I just don't know how to initiate those security features.

Would anyone be willing to assist me in creating a secured wifi setup? I will take any recommendations given or if anyone can direct me to some reputable websites in order to help me achieve my desired settings.

Thanks in advance for all the help.

manuel1980

[manuel1980]

Also, how do i engage in an encrypted signal?

Thanks again.

[johnwill]

You have all the encryption you need with the cellular connection. A VPN is only used to connect directly between two secure sites, not to browse the web. Most sites that handle any sort of sensitive data are already using encryption to transfer the data.

[manuel1980]

that's for the response johnwill, i see what you're saying about the broardcard having it's own encryption. Question is that when i'm browsing, sometimes i'll be prompted with "the information you have entered is to be sent over an unencrypted connection and could easily be read by a third party. Is there any way I can make the encryption more refined. If my connection were fully encrypted, would i normally be prompted with that message.

On another note, do you prefer zone labs in order to monitor spyware, ads, adaware? If yes, I would then have to deactivate my mcaffe in order to use it. There seems to be a conflict between the two pieces of software.

Just looking for some insight since I'm relatively new to this. If you have better solutions, what would you do?

Thanks in advance.

[johnwill]

This is a standard response for the Internet. Remember, once your connection makes it to the ISP, it goes through many hops to get to the destination. At any one of these, it's possible to monitor the traffic on the connection. Not likely, but possible. This has nothing to do with the cellular connection and would happen for any kind of connecting, including my wired connection here. If you are on a secure web page, normally denoted by the https instead of the HTTP, and the padlock symbol on the status line, you don't see this.

As far as McAfee, I'm not much of a fan of Norton or McAfee, both have become bloated and buggy. I personally use either AVG (free) or NOD32 for my AV, and I just use the Windows firewall if necessary on the road. At home, the NAT firewall of my router is all I've ever needed, and I've operated that way for years.