Secure your internet connection at Starbucks

As someone who works from a home office I often am looking for a change in scenery and find myself up at the local Starbucks, that way I can get a great cup of coffee and get some work done at the same time. Using the T-Mobile HotSpot service I am easily able to connect and get to work, except with the HotSpot connection my internet traffic has always been unsecured and therefor open for snooping. It turns out that T-Mobile offers a Connection Manager software for Windows but nothing for Mac.

Now, thanks to a tip from Mac OS X Hints my MacBook connection will be secure also. You will have to connect via TLLS.

The basics of the process are: Open Internet Connect and add a new 802.1x configuration. I also had to click the Configure button for TTLS and enter PAP as the ‘TTLS INNER Authentication.’ The other authentication methods are left as default. After setting everything up, the end result looked like this. The process is a bit complex, so you might want to call them if you’re unsure of anything in that screenshot.

This should leave you with little to worry about, the tipster also suggests that if you have any trouble connecting that you call the tech support line for T-Mobile HotSpot, that they were actually “astonishingly helpful”. Its nice to see Mac users getting some solid tech support.

Read [Mac OS X Hints] Via [TUAW]