European Commission launching #Wifi4EU initative, 93k high-speed private access points across the EU, free of charge.

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Sunny@slrpnk.net⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/fc16add8-2118-49b6-867a-f4abe10444ea.jpeg

cross-posted from: slrpnk.net/post/25779751

The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:

Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.

Source: digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/…/wifi4eu-citizens

Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)

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hisao@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s mind-blowing how at the same time one EU government guys pushing stuff like DSA while other do something like this (which is nice, and a complete opposite).

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- BlueBockser@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  What’s the problem with the Digital Services Act?
  
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  - rmuk@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Yeah, of all the things to criticise the EU for the DSA is a bizarre pick. Challenging techbro dominance with simple and technically-sensible demands on the gatekeepers is a win for the average person in my book.
    
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  - hisao@ani.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    They tried to push it to the point of stripping encryption from internet altogether and when that didn’t work they tried demanding chat apps to be able to scan people messages before they send them. Maybe I’m confusing multiple entirely different things together, but I kinda heard that mostly with the abbreviation DSA flying around so I assumed it was sorta umbrella for all those things.
    
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- Bloomcole@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Indeed from their history of constantly wanting more control and invasive measures, always sold in the name of security, protection of minors, etc… I’m highly sceptical and always asume the worst.
  
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  - PonyOfWar@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    But those are all publicly available pieces of legislation. It’s quite a leap to go from that to just assuming they’ll secretly and illegally spy on you through public wifi networks, without any law allowing them to do so. Besides, if they have no problem doing that, why would internet through your European ISP be any safer?
    
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LMurch@thelemmy.club ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
That’s cool. Here in the US, we’re this close to banning vaccines. *sad trombone sound

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- deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Having a union-wide regulatory framework for soda bottle caps, or mandatory categorization of cucumbers seems a lot less like a government overreach in comparison. Thanks, I guess… 🥲
  
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  - sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    How else would you categorize cucumbers? Automatically? I guess if you had them on a conveyer belt with sensors, but manually seems simpler
    
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- Matriks404@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I hope you’re joking.
  
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Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Title is wrong. It’s an old initiative, not even funded anymore. Ran from 2018 to 2020 with 120 Million EUR.

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- AlsaValderaan@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  A bit offtopic about a pet peeve of mine, but this is why it’d be super nice if social media that end up getting screenshot had absolute timestamps. Thank you for letting us know.
  
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- Sunny@slrpnk.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  my bad! I misread the context and had not heard of it before - yet living in the EU. I will change the title. I got confused as I saw their post on LinkedIn, and it was posted recently: linkedin.com/…/european-commission_wifi4eu-activi…
  
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  - viking@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s still active as in, they maintain the hotspots. But I just had a look at the map, and it looks like there’s spotty service mostly clustered around tiny villages, rather than providing coverage to areas that actual get significant tourism or other visitors.
    
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- HK65@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  One of their access points has saved my skin twice now, so I’m happy it exists.
  
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- interdimensionalmeme@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  35E/month per access point for 3 years, it’s not too bad if they got actual use, if that means where ever you go there will be free internet at hand that can be relied upon and that will even save the precious RF bandwidth of cell phone towers and reduces cell phone subscription by an equivalent amount
  
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  - Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    if that means where ever you go there will be free internet at hand that can be relied upon
    
    Yeah if that were the case it could be useful. Unfortunately the map looks pretty bad: wifi4eu.ec.europa.eu/#/list-accesspoints
    
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giacomo@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
oh dude, they promised to be privacy friendly! maybe I’m just to american to believe in promises.

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- AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  You don’t have to trust them any more than you trust your local Starbucks WiFi. We’re at the point where your traffic should no longer be vulnerable just because you’re on the wrong WiFi network.
  
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  - 8fingerlouie@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    My traffic is not vulnerable, but my device might be.
    
    When you connect to public WiFi, you also share it with others, and maybe someone on that network wants to test out their new hacker skills ?
    
    Maybe not as much of a problem for phones, but that juicy developer laptop running unauthenticated MongoDB with a dump of the production database… yup, that now “mine”.
    
    Ideally all those services should be listening on 127.0.0.1 / ::1, but everybody makes mistakes. Maybe the service comes preconfigured to listen on 0.0.0.0.
    
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  - shalafi@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I feel like the OP you’re responding to. Explain how I should be comfortable? The idea creeps me out, but I admit I haven’t delved into security for a few years.
    
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  - PlexSheep@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Been that way since https became common
    
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  - prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    You don’t have to trust them any more than you trust your local Starbucks WiFi
    
    I don’t really trust that either
    
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- Vinstaal0@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  That’s why audits exist
  
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- Bloomcole@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The EU is almost just as bad, I know the bar is high compared to the US, but still.
  
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  - Honytawk@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    There are tons of things the EU is doing well, dude.
    
    From resisting the technocapitalist rethoric of the US, to standing up against imperial bullies like Russia.
    
    I’m not saying it is perfect, nothing is. But sometimes it feels like the EU is the only reasonable beacon in a sea of corruption.
    
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Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Well I don’t know if that’s a good use of EU money. I’d rather see investments in large and difficult infrastructure, rail, software, datacenters, industrial sectors we’re currently lacking, grid investments - stuff like that.

End user internet access is more like thousands of small decentralised projects. The coordination might make it easier to use compared to if everyone did their own free wifi project, but that’s such a small benefit…

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- Baleine@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m sure we could invest in all of them and money wouldn’t be the problem.
  
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  - zlatko@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    So the initiative here is the initiative itself.
    
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- iglou@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  As always, it’s not like both aren’t possible. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of railway projects ongoing at the same time.
  
  A government can take care of more than one issue at a time, luckily.
  
  It may be a small benefit for you (I assume you are german based on your server), but not every european country or citizen has the same access to internet. This is a good initiative, but obviously not primarily intended for the richer citizens/countries of the union.
  
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  - Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I would say it’s a small benefit for anyone. It’s not like people will walk to the town square, or the park or the hospital to use some free EU Wifi.
    
    The title is also very wrong I found out. It’s not being launched. It’s not even funded any more.
    
    Wifi4EU ran from 2018 to 2020 with a funding of 120 million EUR. They paid up to 15 thousand EUR for equipment and installation per municipality, the local municipalities had to pay for the internet service and maintenance.
    
    This is the result: wifi4eu.ec.europa.eu/#/list-accesspoints
    
    Still looks like a pointless exercise to me.
    
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berty@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Do you need that app to connect to a WiFi network?

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- sivanataraja@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  No, the app is just a map of the hotspots.
  
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- SomethingBurger@jlai.lu ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  To add to the other comment, you can see the map here.
  
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Epzillon@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If this does what it says on the box its huge

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ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think this is mostly for non-EU tourists. You don’t pay for roaming in EU anymore so you don’t really need WiFi when traveling.

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- TheProtagonist@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Recently mobile phone operators introduced a “fair use policy”, so it’s not really a”roam like at home” anymore, but data volumes can be limited to a fraction of what you are entitled to in your home country.
  
  This is a point where WiFi might get more important again when traveling.
  
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- ook@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Well, speak for yourself. I don’t have a running phone contract because I don’t really use my phone much for calling or stick to open WiFi when I need to be online. Just got top-up mobile data for the times when there is no WiFi.
  
  I definitely do want WiFi when travelling.
  
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- HiTekRedNek@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  If I had this in the US, I’d be cancelling my cellular service entirely, I’d still keep my home service though, to VPN into it for a bit more security when using a public wifi connection.
  
  I would also just transfer my phone number to one of those cheap voip providers, then just use voip from my phone everywhere.
  
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  - prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Ehhh… I might cancel the data part of my plan, but I dunno how comfortable I would be relying on notoriously spotty Wi-Fi to make or receive phone calls.
    
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  - a_wild_mimic_appears@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    you wouldn’t be happy with that. i looked up how the Wifi routers are distributed, and (in Austria at least) small towns have 1-2 routers placed in the municipal buildings they have, servicing the town square. Which means you would have to sit around inside or outside of city hall all day.
    
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davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Leaving the EU is one of the stupidest self harming things we ever did.

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- Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Who are you?
  
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  - 46_and_2@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    UK if I have to guess.
    
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  - davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’m the former prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Tony Blair. Who are you?
    
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- ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  And I’m glad that the UK left the EU, because now the EU has its own Cuba in front of its shores. Makes life more interesting, doesn’t it?
  
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  - davidagain@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I’ll not sure I see the parallel.
    
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PieMePlenty@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Ahh yes, border free travel… wait a minute, why are the Austrian police on the border here? Wait a minute, why are they stopping us…

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- themurphy@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Because it’s border free travel for EU citizens. It’s still another country you enter, as of course, there are rules.
  
  They stop you to check. You obviously pass through.
  
  Also, there’s still illegal import rules.
  
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  - possumparty@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It’s still schengen rules, so if you take a train the likelihood of being stopped at the border is pretty low. Austria may have border agents board the train and verify passports, but that’s still pretty uncommon in Europe.
    
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Zer0_F0x@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Honestly nowadays data plans are cheap on most mobile carriers and they’re obligated to have them work accross EU, so you no longer really need Wi-Fi when traveling.

Also, I can see this being easily and constantly exploited via Wi-Fi attacks where hackers set up fake Hotspots with the same name as the closest legit one.

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- ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Meanwhile Czech carrier cartel:
  
  BTW free Wi-Fi exploits are pretty much gone with widespread HSTS
  
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  - Exec@pawb.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Why is it written with USD?
    
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  - REDACTED@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Only the rich can afford to pay per GB
    
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- HejMedDig@feddit.dk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m sure non-EU visitors will like it
  
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  - pastermil@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Getting their credentials stolen thru WiFi attack?
    
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- ScreamingFirehawk@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Cries in Brexit
  
  ~£2 a day data charge on most UK networks
  
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  - NotJohnSmith@feddit.uk ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Isn’t Lebara less than that per month and includes roaming?
    
    www.hotukdeals.com/share-deal-from-app/4655085
    
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Mac@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Damn, this is so cool.
We could have had this in the States too, but, well, you all know.

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- miked@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This will never be possible in the States. We still have areas with no cellular.
  
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  - Mac@mander.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Surely that’s unrelated to the billions of dollars that the telecom companies stole from the taxpayer after promising to build out infrastructure?
    
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  - Glitchvid@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Ironically enough there’s basically a private version of this through Comcast turning their rented CPEs into their own unlicensed wifi mesh, they call it WiFi Pass – they at least have the courtesy to give it to you gratis if you’re already paying for residential service.
    
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- deafboy@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  This would be cool 20 years ago. Now it’s just a stunt.
  
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  - Honytawk@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Better late than never though
    
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- Bloomcole@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  It shows you are american and not familiar with the EU.
  ‘privacy friendly’ is a euphemistic PR term, not unlike making the horrible Patriot Act worse and renaming it the ‘Freedom Act’.
  
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  - sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Do you have other examples? I am really curious when they said privacy friendly and ended up snooping.
    
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FarraigePlaisteach@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
More Europeans than ever can watch the live-streamed genocide that we’ve been arming and encouraging!

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- BaroqueInMind@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Through various InterPol managed servers that track your telemetry.
  
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- Bloomcole@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  And have to walk on eggshells if they protest against it or get arrested for ‘supporting terrorism’.
  
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Hule@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Free Wireless ISP, you say?

cheapskate romanian sounds

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- lmuel@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Germans are gonna start getting out their old cantennas or nanostations and point it at the closest hotspot
  
  Of course I would never do such a thing, being half german, living in Germany. Certainly didn’t live off a nearby restaurants wifi hotspot for almost 2 years.
  
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- mholiv@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Classic European flavored racism. Are you aware that you are promoting racism or not?
  
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  - Honytawk@feddit.nl ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Pretty sure they are themselves Romanian.
    
    Can you even be racist against yourself?
    
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  - Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    If Hule wants to make cheapskate Romanian sounds he’s allowed to. It’s his goddamn choice whether he wants to be a cheapskate or not.
    
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kokesh@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
No taking on EU -run wifi? Those f’rs want to read our private encrypted chats. Why would anyone connect to this?

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hmmm@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I want to be European so bad.

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user224@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Thanks to EU roaming rules…

Not quite. I’ve come across a few plans that don’t offer EU roaming, and also those where there’s far less data offered than the regulation requires, or found a loophole.

Let’s go for the examples of no EU roaming data:
T-Mobile CZ Twist IoT CR - IoT card, but it offers up to 500GB of data paid once a year (78 EUR), only usable in Czech Republic.
T-Mobile CZ 100GB edition - regular SIM, but also CR-only
Vodafone CZ GIGA 100 + 50 GB - also a regular prepaid, but no roaming
Swan Mobile (4ka) Sloboda Data - 300GB in Slovakia, but 0.144 EUR per MB in EU.

For the last example, they’re also the same example that breaches the regulation with other packages. When I did the calculations, they exactly checked out for other 3 MNOs, so I guess I did them right, but they didn’t for Swan.
Further confirming this is the fact that they have already received at least 2 (as far as I could find) fines for breaching these RLAH regulations, that is 15,000 and 90,000 EUR, but I suppose that just ends up being cheaper for them, as it still isn’t fixed.

Anyway, perhaps they did in fact fix this, with a loophole.
For example, take Sloboda Nekonecno+ for 25EUR/month with “unlimited” (300GB) data. 8.25GB of EU roaming does not look right there.
So what is going on?
On paper, it’s split up into base and additional package. Base package is 20EUR, and only has 2GB of data. Additional package with unlimited data is 5EUR/month, and as you could guess, cannot be purchased separately.

So, for base package, you get full allowance, thus 2GB. Additional package is calculated separately, (4.06504065041 / 1.30) * 2 is 6.25. And thus 8.25GB instead of 31.27GB was born.

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biotin7@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
But why an App & not a PWA ?

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Arcane2077@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
So, if I live in the EU, what’s stopping me from cancelling my home plan and make the experience worse for everyone?

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Bloomcole@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
‘privacy-friendly’ from the EU? 😂

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REDACTED@infosec.pub ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This seems a bit wasteful. Everyone already has a phone with network connection, most having infinite data, and statistics are rapidly improving. I don’t remember the last time I had to use public wifi, feels a bit outdated and insecure.

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ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Why Wi-Fi? All the expense, none of the coverage.

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