Annoyances: “Free” WiFi

The Denver Airport advertises “free” WiFi. Of course, it is not free. In this case, every HTTP request is intercepted by a router that replaces the response with a frameset which then loads the requested page surrounded by ads sold by the WiFi provider.

This messes any application that uses an embedded browser to deliver UI, like the Second Life Viewer, for instance.

Second Life.jpg

It appears to be easily circumvented. I turned off JavaScript in Firefox and was able to view the BBC News front page without incident.

More like this: .

This entry was written by Bill Humphries and posted on August 12, 2008 at 8:00 am and filed under culture, technology. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the Atom feed for this post. Trackbacks are closed, but you can post a comment.

One Comment

  1. Earl Cooley III
    Posted August 16, 2008 at 6:11 am | Permalink

    Instead of turning off all Javascript, you should be able to configure the NoScript Firefox plugin to target the issue more precisely.

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