I spotted this on the Melbourne subreddit from user DrowingBeast

Firstly using any form of public wifi runs the risk of having your packets snooped and some form of data taken. Whether that be the website you’re on, an image you view or the name you type into a web form. Public wifi in my views should only be used to update apps and most of the time free wifi is slow, so just avoid it.

From the above screenshot you can see that the Pharan central free public wifi is stating the information that they may collect. Some of it is very very personal and with the whole lot it is very much building a complete profile on you (its users).

Its strange though because from my understanding they can only get this data if they intentionally have set up some “net” to grab your data if it meets the criteria above.

Because it looks to be the only information you give up to get online is living or working locally and your email address. For the alarming notice to be issued must mean they are doing some serious packet sniffing does it not?!

Its bad enough to have someone external snoop on a public network but for the public network itself to snoop and store, that’s very very much a bad look. The older generations would fall into this trap, young people not so much but being aware about risks in using public wifi is something overlooked.

You see free public wifi plastered everywhere and almost 10 years ago as a young teen i was all over them downloading apps and videos when smart phone technology was still oh so new. Now its common and people in their 40s, 50s and 60s have smartphones and will be using public wifi just like this to potentially do banking and other tasks that can offer their sensitive data.

I absolutely think more should be done to educate and warn about the risks and potentials of what can happen when using public wifi and networks. Perhaps maybe we will move past free wifi though and have a widespread or global network, but even that would have a massive target for hackers.