Life on the Road – Trucking News Blog

Well…mostly foolproof. Over the last few years I’ve probably written several thousand words regarding hotspot security. It’s the subject of the first article I ever had published and I devoted three full chapters to the issue of security in my barely selling book “Over the Road Wireless For Dummies”. Security’s important; especially when, by their very nature, Wi-Fi hotspots are completely unsecured. Because it’s such an important issue I don’t want to minimize the importance of implementing multiple security measures; but there’s one hotspot security tool that I believe to be the most powerful of them all: the Virtual Private Network (VPN).

The Problem

A truck stop hotspot, or, for that matter, any hotspot, is a public network that everyone has access to and, to which, everyone using it becomes a member. When your laptop’s connected to a network there’s a potential for viral infections and hack attacks; not a good thing.

The Solution

A VPN does just what its name suggests; it creates, within the public network that everyone can access, a virtual private network that only you can access. When you’re using a VPN all of your data travels within an impenetrable encrypted tunnel. So…sounds great…but how do you get a VPN of your own?

Corporate business travelers are often able to gain access to both the Internet and their own company’s network by using a VPN set up by their IT guys. Chances are good, though, that the trucking company you’re leased to, or driving for, hasn’t seen fit to set one up. No problem.

For quite some time now, nearly from its inception, I’ve been using a VPN service provided by JiWire. When I first signed up for the service it was known as SpotLock and, now, it’s called Hotspot Helper. More than just the name has changed but the VPN portion of the service has remained essentially unaltered; and the annual cost of a subscription has dropped to $24.95.

Additional Features

There are two other service features included within the Hotspot Helper service that you may or may not find particularly useful. One of them is a Hotspot Finder that might come in handy but, because the majority of listed hotspots are totally inaccessible to trucks, it’ll likely be of little use. Also included, though, is a Wi-Fi Mailer service that I’ve found to be very useful.

Sometimes, usually because the hotspot operator is blocking outgoing mail due to spam concerns, it’s impossible to send email when connected to a hotspot. I haven’t found this to be a problem at any of the truck stop hotspots but I use an ISP-hosted email account whose servers won’t accept mail not originating from its own network.

This problem could be avoided by using a web-based email account like Gmail or Yahoo! Mail but, since I use Thunderbird (you might use Outlook or Outlook express) and I like my current email provider, that’s not the perfect solution either. The Wi-Fi Mailer service circumvents all the issues and, like the pony express, gets the mail to its destination. Just in case you thought you might use it to further your part-time career as an over-the-road spammer, though, you should know that JiWire limits the service to 200 emails a day.

Alternatives

You should know that Hotspot Helper isn’t the only game in town. There are other hotspot VPN services out there vying for your attention. Here’s a few of them:

• HotSpotVPN: Among the VPN services of which I’m aware this is the most expensive. You might want to consider it, however, if you’re an over-the-road doctor; they offer HIPPA compliant encryption.
• WiTopia: They’re a great company and, if I wasn’t already using Hotspot Helper, I’d probably be using their personalVPN™ service because, although it’s a little more expensive, it’s a little faster.
• Hotspot Shield: This is the least expensive of all the VPN services. It’s free. That attribute alone puts it on my short list and, although I haven’t yet done so, I’m planning on giving Hotspot Shield a spin so I can provide a full review of it here on these pages.

Bottom Line

Hotspot Helper is available for download with a 10-day unlimited use trial period. After that, you’ll need to fork over $24.95 for a year of unlimited use, which I consider a bargain considering its capabilities. (JiWire’s SpotLock predecessor cost almost twice as much.) Even if you don’t pony up the pesos for the registration fee you can still use the VPN for up to an hour per day. That’s certainly better than no security at all.

While there are other VPN services available, and one is even completely free, you won’t find any with the mix features offered by JiWire. If you, like me, spend time using truck stop hotspots then Hotspot Helper is almost a no-brainer (Hey! I resemble that remark!).