The Wi-Fi Privacy Ticker: Improving Awareness & Control of Personal Information Exposure on Wi-Fi

Anyone within range of an 802.11 wireless network ("Wi-Fi") can use free software to collect the unencrypted web traffic of others on the network. However, many Wi-Fi users are completely unaware of the risk that this creates. This paper aims to improve users' awareness about what they expose to others on Wi-Fi networks and provide them with some control. Their system, the Wi-Fi Privacy Ticker, displays information about the exposure of sensitive terms that are sent to and from a user's computer and prevents the unencrypted transmission of terms from the user's computer that she has identified as highly sensitive.