Here are the tools Snowden used to encrypt his communications

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1. Tor

Formerly known as "The Onion Network", Tor is a free software to enable online anonymity. Tor redirects Internet traffic through a global network of volunteers consisting of more than three thousand relays that hide the activity or location of the user to anyone who is performing network surveillance or traffic analysis.

When Edward Snowden decided to take all the information he could and leak it to the media to publicly denounce atrocities against individuality and the right to private information, he focused on using his knowledge about encryption to make communications impossible to track or filter to his superiors or even other governments.

Snowden used a series of tools that anyone can access, which says a lot about security available to anyone.

We now see the importance of an open source project that is poorly funded. In the same way that projects like OpenSSL should have been supported, these are some projects that should also be funded:

2. Tails

Tails is certainly one of the tools that people who handle sensitive information should definitely use. It is a Linux distribution based on Debian Live and whose focus is security and anonymity.

Unlike other operating systems, Tails is designed to be used from a USB and so it never leaves any traces of usage in the memories of the computers you use to log in. It is the great strength of Tails, you do not need to have a PC, any PC that you find with a USB port and the option of booting from a USB drive, you can use it to have your own secure communications environment.

Tails uses Tor to anonymize your Internet connection, but not just web browsing: all communications are routed using this network, blocking any application that attempts to connect using a network other than Tor.

You can download Tails from the project’s site and install it on any USB drive.

3. Tor + Tor Browser

As we mentioned before, Tails is always connected through the Tor network. Tor Browser is the solution for those who want to surf the web without leaving any trace. First, because it is connected using a P2P network of Tor users anonymously and safely. Second, because the browser does not store any data, preventing passwords to be saved in the browser’s memory.

Tor is an anonymous and secure network, which is used both for good and for bad things. We know of famous sites like Silk Road that have given a bad name to this network, but it is clear that like any other tool, you can use it with good or bad intentions.

4. GPG and PGP

PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy and it’s an application created by Phil Zimmermann, which allows to encrypt contents based on public key cryptography. This means that, in order to read an email encrypted with PGP, the sender has to have a key to encrypt and the recipient must have another key to decrypt the message.

PGP has proven to be quite safe to share information via email. It is the system that Snowden used to communicate with Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian.

PGP is quite easy to use in your communications. If you use Gmail, Yahoo Mail, or Outlook.com, you can use Mailvelope. For Windows users there is a plugin for Outlook 2010 and 2013 along with Gpg4win. Yahoo already encrypts the content of your messages even between servers.

5. Lavabit

Lavabit was the secure email service used by Snowden. Created and maintained by Ladar Levison, he decided to shut down the service and the company in August of 2013 due to the pressure of the US government. US Congress laws made Lavabit unable to share what was happening while they became accomplices in crimes against the United States.

Snowden used an email address with a lavabit.com domain to communicate with the media while in the Moscow airport. Nevertheless, the service was forced to close due to pressure by the US government.

Lavabit offered a webmail service with a focus on safety. They used advanced cryptographic methods to encrypt communications and emails in order to make them impossible to break into. In mid-2013, Lavabit had over 400,000 users with free and paid services, depending on the required storage space.

Today we can find many email services focusing on security, such as Hushmail or Resistemail.

6. Other tools

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All you have to do is search for a while to find many solutions that claim to be secure and encrypted for all types of communications. There are complete operating systems, email management solutions, mail encryption and secure web navigation. But there are many other services that can be used to ensure private communications.

Especially when it comes to instant ​​messaging, it is easy to find solutions with encryption. In the area of ​​mobile messaging, there are dozens of applications that claim to be safe. WhatsApp recently became one of those safe options, since they started implementing end-to-end encryption. BlackBerry Messenger is another safe alternative to hold encrypted, multiplatform conversations.

Facing the challenges in the communication industry like a pro

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Telecommunication, like everything else, is changing at such high rates that some companies are being left behind. The rapid progress is sure to raise some challenges to the industry as a whole and facing these challenges head on will ultimately determine who remains standing after it’s all said and done.

Data is the most important asset in this day and age. So as a service provider, being able to make data a priority will go a long way. With the new apps and services being offered by use of Wi-Fi and internet, data usage is becoming more sought out than voice services. Service providers should be ready to be able to offer better and faster bandwidths at competitive prices, because more and more the trend is turning towards increasing the data capability on our plans rather than voice. Now, with this consideration, it will become more and more difficult to monetize services for service providers, since increasing bandwidth will not allow them to charge for minutes or text messages as they were before. Due to this, it is imperative that these companies start to consider launching apps and services of their own like HD quality video conferencing. By making it exclusive with features and content, providers will have to set it apart from the rest, thus making the brand competitive in the market. Considering the increment in use of data, service providers must be prepared in terms of infrastructure. They should have a system that is scalable and controlled so that it can grow parallel with the industry. This will also allow companies to control costs by having scalable solutions to each of the challenges faced not only by service providers, but the industry as a whole.

The industry on the other hand, has four major types of challenges that will affect all of those who participate and take part in this industry. Compliance threats, such as corporate governance, regulations and laws that will directly affect how the business is run. Then there are operational threats that impact the systems and people in it, as well as the overall value chain of the business and its processes. Strategic threats will arise as well, as the constant struggle between competitors continues, and the relationship with customers and investors becomes even more important. Finally, there could also be financial threats arising due to volatile markets or in the economy in general. Through these four threats, the industry must maintain afloat where telecommunications are more important than ever and the possibilities seem to be endless. Within each one of these threats there are challenges that the industry should prepare for.

One of the biggest challenges will be ignoring the new roles within the industry’s ecosystem. As mentioned before, failing to recognize new opportunities will not let you position the value chain under the new conditions of the market. Many options will arise, but the important part is to stay relevant with consumer needs and innovate ways to offer packages that will stand apart from the rest of the things offered in the market.

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Considering initially the challenges that are considered to be compliance threats the most important one is the lack of regulatory procedures for all of the new services that are popping up. These new market structures are reinventing everything as they go along, and most of the time regulations can’t keep up. The other hot topic, especially recently, has been privacy and security. As technology opens the door to new communication channels, authorities begin to wonder and analyze the different needs that may come up while persecuting criminals and how this new technology will affect their roles. Up until now, the new players in the telecommunication industry has sent a clear message saying that they believe in the user’s privacy and will uphold it no matter what.

Organizational agility will be essential when it comes to facing operational threats. Being able to stay up to date as an organization with its infrastructure and qualified personnel will be a big challenge with so many changes coming our way. But the other important factor will be not understanding what the clients want. By continuing to offer the same as always, we are not necessarily tapping into the needs that the consumers have, and by not doing so becoming obsolete. This will be the biggest challenge as far as strategic threats go.

Finally, not taking on innovative solutions to the challenges that arise, will ultimately prove to be the biggest challenge when it comes to financial threats. In reality, not being able to envision the growth of the industry, understand where its heading and find ways to keep up or even be ahead of the pack will prove to be challenges that companies within the industry may not be able to bounce back from. The telecommunication industry is sure to be one of the most important in the years to come, offering us new and innovate ways to communicate with our loved ones, and to keep in touch with our company’s stakeholders, employees and consumers.

Are cell phone carriers a thing of the past?

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Cell phones have been around since 1973, and began being commercialized ten years later. I think when they came out we would never have been able to imagine where we are today thanks to the beginning on the mobile phone. The freedom of being anywhere but still being able to contact each other and have a voice conversation may have been novelty back then, but now the technological advances now let a cell phone know exactly where another person is located, have a video chat and even exchange data like photos, documents or multimedia files. We have come a long way, but more changes seem to be coming and fast. In this fast-paced industry, we have, up to now, depended on cell phone carriers to receive and make phone calls, but more and more this service begins to look almost obsolete. With the creation of smartphones and the new apps being developed that offer communication tools like messaging, live chat and calls, the questions begin to rise: do we still need cell phone carriers?

 Taking a step back

Before we get into answering that question, it’s important to take a step back and analyze the role of cell phones in the past, and nowadays, as well as the needs of the consumers. In the 1990’s there was a big transition in communication, shifting from texting on beepers to making calls on your mobile phone. At that moment in time, making a call and being able to be anywhere was almost magical. This service at the same time also allowed us to send a short message service or better known as SMS, which also innovated from only being able to send numbers on a beeper to actual words and phrases. To connect to someone all you needed was their number, and with this single piece of information you could either call or message the person to contact them.

 Understanding where we are

Today when we meet someone we truly want to keep in touch with we may ask a series of questions like: What’s your e-mail?, What’s your WhatsApp number?, How can I find you on Facebook?, and maybe at the very end they will ask for your actual number. Things have definitely changed, and almost all of these changes can be attributed to different social media and the development of apps that have given people a simpler way to get in touch. Today most people will rely on their Facebook or WhatsApp to keep in touch, even to the point that some may question why they are still paying for their cell phone carrier plan.

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In this new day and age, it all comes down to the easiest way to communicate or contact someone, while multitasking with other activities. Something that has become essential with these social media alternatives to communicating has been that the directory is what you expect it to be. Let’s say you want to use a new messaging service that just came out, but your friends are not part of it yet. Even if it’s promoted as the next big thing, you will probably find no utility for it, because you can’t communicate with the people you want to, so what’s the point. So, yes we have more options to communicate like Google, Skype, email, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, SMS and the list goes on, but now the problem becomes which one do I use? What will usually end up happening is that you’ll start slowly creating a circle of friends in each type of communication, where you start identifying which is the easiest channel to reach each of your friends and family members. Seems like a lot of work, right? Well, now there are even more trends and it’s simplifying this to the point we can find everyone we need in one place, instead of having the fragmented messaging and phone service we have today. At the end of the day, I think we can all agree though that most of the channels we use today to communicate are via apps or social media tools.

 Will apps really replace cell phone carriers?

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The new players in communication are not rival telecommunication companies, but instead social media and VoIP have taken this industry by storm. People are now beginning to rely much more on services like WhatsApp than their carrier’s SMS. People have started to see the how their costs are cut and they are still able to reach out to friends and loved ones as part of their data plan. In response to these trends many carriers have made deals with WhatsApp as part of the plans offered to their clients, allowing them to have the best of both worlds. If we will ever get to the point of completely eliminating cell phone carrier services is unclear, but evidence is certainly aiming in that direction.

WhatsApp: the most secure instant messaging service… Finally.

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Some of you may have noticed a sign pop up in your WhatsApp messages recently stating that your messages are now secured with end-to-end encryption. They had been working on this integration for the past year and a half and finally last week it went live making it the most secure instant messaging service out there. It ties into a huge debate occurring right now about encryption, which has been even more controversial since the FBI sued Apple for not aiding them in entering the phone of a San Bernardino shooter. So, what does the integration mean for WhatsApp and the rest of the encryption debate.

What users are now experiencing is a strong security system designed by Open Whisper Systems. Some have even speculated that this same encryption will be spread to other messaging services in the hopes to offer users maximum safety.

What is encryption?

In today’s technological world most of our communication is handled via email, social media or messaging services, which leads to a scary thought, can people eavesdrop and take a peek at your private either personal or corporate messages. Even though encryption has been around for a very long time, it has now become relevant as a means to protect your information in this digital age. Encryption is the best way out there to secure your data. Once a file is encrypted it can only be opened and read if you have access to the key or password that will allow you to decrypt it. If it is encrypted it is referred to as a ciphertext, whereas if it’s unencrypted it is known as plain text.

What’s been the news on encryption lately?

It was all over the news for weeks as Apple fought against the FBI in an effort to defend their constitutional rights, and even though the case was dropped because the government was able to unlock the San Bernardino shooter’s phone without Apple’s assistance, the debate is definitely not over. Just today they are appearing before the congressional committee once again to continue to debate on encryption. You can even tune in to the live hearing on April 19 at 10am ET. In the middle of all of this heated debate WhatsApp decides to go and introduce new measures to protect even more the content on our digital conversations.

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Why did WhatsApp make this move?

WhatsApp, a Facebook-owned instant messaging service, faced an embarrassing public moment when they in May 2011 it was discovered that they had a security flaw. This flaw gave way to the possibility of user’s accounts being hijacked and this way gaining access to all of their incoming messages and traffic. Although they release a new app this was not a solution to the problem, since everything was still sent in plaintext. The image of having one of the most important and used instant messaging apps coined as having poor security was in definite need of attention. Despite rising popularity of the app the problem persisted in 2012 with a hacker posting information of another major hack that allowed them to change any user’s status. In response, they launched later that year a cryptographic method replacing the plain text, which ended up being broken. This brought on even more criticism. In late 2013 a university student identified yet another flaw demonstrating that they decryption method was weak since it used the same encryption key on both sides of the conversation. So basically this meant if someone with basic technical knowledge on decryption wanted to take the time to try to decrypt your messages, they still could. Finally, in 2014 WhatsApp was found to have a two out of four on the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s secure messaging scorecard. It lost points due to all of the issues it has had over the years with encryption, not having a way to identify the user and not having a well-documented security design.

In November 2014, the new owner of WhatsApp decided to take cards in the matter and made a partnership with Open Whisper Systems who planned on using TextSecure to enable this end-to-end encryption. TextSecure is a service that uses a cryptographic key that will make it unique in each device this way being the best way to protect its users.

Now

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After launching this new encryption, especially during the debate on encryption occurring in the United States between private communication companies and the government, WhatsApp did comment saying: "While we recognize the important work of law enforcement in keeping people safe, efforts to weaken encryption risk exposing people's information to abuse from cyber criminals, hackers, and rogue states,"

On the FBI’s side there has been no comment on the WhatsApp new system, but they have said this in general about their position on encryption: "We must ensure both the fundamental right of people to engage in private communications as well as the protection of the public. ...We are seeing more and more cases where we believe significant evidence resides on a phone, a tablet, or a laptop -- evidence that may be the difference between an offender being convicted or acquitted. If we cannot access this evidence, it will have ongoing, significant impacts on our ability to identify, stop, and prosecute these offenders."

How to encrypt all your communications without being a security expert

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at Flickr.com

We live in an ever-connected world. Today we can access almost any service from our smartphones, desktops or laptops, in the comfort of our own home. And we do it casually, usually regardless of who we share the network with or if data is transmitted securely. So today we will take a look at how to encrypt all your communications without being a security expert.

We must combine two issues here: the first one is safety, and the second is usability -that is, the fact that something is simple to use, that it does not involve a delay in our communications and so on. The objective is to make communications secure in a transparent manner for the average user.

 Secure connections that are already encrypted even if you don’t know it

In many cases we are already using secure connections, where the traffic between one point, for example our computer, and another, such as the website of our bank, is already encrypted. We are talking about https connections that guarantee that the information is exchanged safely.

Normally those are the connections used by banks, but also by the servers of many email services to ensure that, even if the traffic between your computer and the server of the page that you entered to make any sort of query is intercepted, no one will have access to the information that was exchanged.

 VPN connections, a guarantee for our security

But not all pages use this communication protocol and often we want to maintain the privacy of our Internet communications. In these cases we can use a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Put simply, we could say that it is useful to connect two points safely, be it connecting to the Internet or accessing remotely to another computer.

To use it we have free and paid alternatives, going from services that only require a registration to use a VPN, to others in which we have to install an application, which is the most common practice in order to create the tunnel through which data will be transferred securely.

Once the application has been installed or the service has been accessed, navigation for users is the same as usual. This can be very interesting if you are connected to a public WiFi network where we share it with a lot of people and we want to keep our data safe.

Another use for VPNs is to access services that have a territorial restriction. For example if we want to access Netflix, Hulu other streaming sites from a foreign country. The connection is made between our device and the VPN servers, which are responsible for sending connection requests to these services, so the request is made from the place where they are located, thus avoiding territorial restrictions. This is very useful if you have to travel to a country that censors Internet access.

 Encryption of messages and voice calls

Not only must we protect Internet communications, but in some cases we may want our messages and voice calls to be encrypted as well. In these cases we can also do it very easily with applications such as Seecrypt, which is available for Android and iOS.

To use it, it is necessary that both users have the application installed in order to talk or exchange data, which greatly reduces the usability of the application. Anyway these apps slightly exceed the scope of an average user.

 Encrypting files easily

Sometimes we don’t mind the communications not being encrypted, but we do want to exchange protected files. In this case you can use encryption apps on a folder on your computer or mobile phone. Most operating systems today offer some encryption options and, if not, you can always resort to third party apps.

One of those apps can be run directly from a USB stick and it is called Toucan. Besides encrypting, it also allows us to create backups or synchronize folders between two devices. One advantage is that even if you access remotely to an online encrypted folder, running Toucan from a USB drive you can decrypt files by simply typing your password.

 Safe spaces in mobile devices

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If you need to carry certain important files on your smartphone, such as a scanned copy of your ID or Social Security Number, you can create an encrypted folder in your SD card, for instance.

Depending on the type of smartphone that you have, you’ll be able to do this from the operating system itself, which is the case with certain Samsung devices. You can choose to encrypt a folder or even the entire device. The greatest part of this is that when it comes to using the phone, it will behave as if the files were not encrypted, but if you lose the phone it will not be accessible without a password.
As you can see, it is not necessary to be a security expert to have secure connections, it is enough with having the appropriate apps or access services that can provide a reliable connection, which give you peace of mind while surfing the web.

How eSports Make The Best Of Telecommunications To Thrive

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Since the beginning of time, men have competed against each other in the never-ending pursuit of fame and glory. The history of sports extends as far back as the existence of military training, to show one’s fitness and usefulness for army recruitment, thus the best being chosen to serve and fight for command. Team sports had most probably been developed to train and prove the capability to fight and work together as a team. These trials and tests of prowess eventually became what we know today as sports. Competitive sports have generally been associated with physical fitness, outdoor activity and imposing displays of bravado; enter eSports and the modern athletes that inspire multitudes to watch their feats in today’s arenas, changing the way we look at sports competitions.

eSports can be defined as a form of sports where the prime aspects of the sport are enabled by electronic systems; the participation of players and teams as well as the projection of the eSports structure are facilitated by human-computer interfaces. Typically eSports take the form of organized multiplayer video game competitions, chiefly between professional players. The most common video game types associated with eSports are real-time strategy (RTS), fighting, first-person shooter (FPS), and multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). Tournaments such as The International, the League of Legends World Championship, the Battle.net World Championship Series, the Evolution Championship Series, and the Intel Extreme Masters, provide both live broadcasts of the competition, and prize money and salaries to competitors on top of lucrative sponsorship deals by third parties.

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Although organized online and offline contests have been a part of videogame culture for a while, involvement and spectatorship of such events have seen a large increase in participation from the late 2000s and early 2010s. While former competitions were largely between amateurs, the rise of professional competitions and growing viewership now supports a significant number of professional players and teams, and not just that, but many video game developers are building features into their games designed to promote such competition. The idea that people may be willing to watch others play competitive video games for big money prizes may surprise skeptics. People often under-estimate the global annual market size and the great amount of viewership harnessed by eSports.

Geographically, eSports competitions come from Germany and the United States, but it is South Korea has the best-established eSports organizations and has been officially licensing professional players for over 15 years. Along with South Korea, the majority of competitions take place in Europe, North America and China. In 2013, Canadian League of Legends player Danny "Shiphtur" Le became the first professional gamer to be granted a United States P-1A visa, a category designated for "Internationally Recognized Athletes".

According to Forbes magazine, the sports market in North America was worth $60.5 billion in 2014 and it is expected to reach $73.5 billion by 2019 and Sports media rights are projected to go from $14.6 billion in 2014 to $20.6 billion by 2019. It is safe to say that sports entertainment is great business. The eSports sector will generate revenue of $621m worldwide this year according to a SuperData report and a revenue estimated to reach $1.9 billion by 2018. It was estimated that approximately 71,500,000 people worldwide watched competitive gaming in 2013 and those numbers are rapidly growing. Most of this exponential growth is due to the increasing availability of streaming media platform and advances of telecommunication. Amazon bought Twitch.tv, one of the largest platforms for eSport streaming, in 2014 for just under $1 billion, while media companies are starting to invest in other eSports corporations and just this year, Twitch itself has teamed up with competitive-gaming platform startup FaceIt to form a professional league that is offering teams co-ownership positions.

“Players and teams are the heart of the eSports community and deserve the opportunity to reap the rewards of their hard work and dedication to grow eSports into a mainstream phenomenon,” said Michele Attisani, co-founder of FaceIt.

Image courtesy of Piotr Drabik at Flickr.com

The future of eSports seems to be expanding into areas that were never even considered before. Even ESPN has now dedicated a whole section on his website to attempt to keep up what goes on in the world of online competitive gaming. The line between the activities you do outside and those indoors with a mouse in front of a screen is narrowing by the day. Not content with invading the realm of traditional broadcasting, eSports now has its very own daily recap show that'll mirror the format of ESPN's SportsCenter. “Cyberathletes” are becoming famous and recognizable everywhere. Although eSports might not match or surpass traditional sports any time soon, its potential business value is clearly too significant to ignore.

How to keep the privacy of your mobile communications

The apps that we use regularly on our mobile devices are not the most suitable channels for sharing sensitive information. If we want to protect the confidentiality of our communications, it is not recommended to use services like WhatsApp or plain old SMS.

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Users have recently become sensitized about the importance of the confidentiality of communications, and they have begun to consider the levels of privacy when choosing one service or another.

Google announced end-to-end encryption between Gmail users precisely to ensure the users of its service that their communications are safe. Following this path, browser extensions such as ShadowCrypt have emerged to encrypt messages, or projects like Dark Mail have been developed to implement a secure email system that is "immune" to espionage and unauthorized interferences.

If we consider that through regular phone conversations, or even through messaging services, we can exchange sensitive information, it makes sense that we take into consideration the privacy of our conversations and, therefore, we look for applications and services to ensure end-to-end encryption in the devices that we use daily.

Just because a service offers encryption between your phone and their servers, that does not guarantee the confidentiality of your communications. There must exist an "end to end" (from one terminal to another) encrypted channel, that is, our conversations should not be accessible on the servers of the service.

Another important detail is the possibility of auditing the services we use, if the source code is accessible, at least it can be reviewed by independent third parties to verify that the declared specifications are met and that there are no undeclared "hidden features".

Encrypted calls from your phone: Android and iOS

Fortunately, day by day there are more options available for both iOS and Android.

Signal is one of the products developed by Open Whisper Systems and it is designed to make secure phone calls between iOS devices, based on end-to-end encrypted communications.

Its usage is extremely simple: install the application and indicate your phone number. Then the application exports your address book to check which contacts use the service and, from there, you can call them.

If you have an Android device, the same company offers the RedPhone app, so you can also make voice calls over a secure communications channel, using your data plan or through a Wi-Fi network.

Signal and RedPhone are interoperable; therefore, from Signal you can make calls to RedPhone users and viceversa. In both cases, the app’s source code is available for audit and communications rely on the ZRTP secure protocol, so we can safely say it’s a reliable service.

Encrypted messaging on desktop and mobile devices

There are several options to protect our messages, some are very well known, such as Telegram, which has a secret chat mode and it offers end to end encryption, and with this option the conversations are not accessible from Telegram’s servers.

Another known and widespread option available on the market are Apple’s iMessage and FaceTime; available on OS X and iOS, these messaging and video calling services also provide end to end encryption but the source code is not available to third parties.

If we want to encrypt SMS, another alternative to communicate securely from Android is Text Secure, but it is only available for text messages.

On iOS, Signal includes both calls and text messages; but on Android you have to use two different apps: RedPhone for calls and Text Secure for text messages.

Image courtesy of Yuri Samoilov at Flickr.com

Another interesting service, which is also cross-platform, is CryptoCat. It is available for both iOS and desktop browsers, this text service allows you to encrypt messages that users exchange (they come out encrypted and are not decrypted until the information reaches the recipient) and it also is an open source project, so it can be audited to verify its functionality. In principle, the communication channel is safe, but the service is somewhat conservative and it clearly states that this is not an infallible tool that you should trust your life with.

BitTorrent has been developing a decentralized instant messaging system that does not depend on the cloud, making information flow directly between the users without having to go through intermediate servers. Bleep, which is the name of this service, intends to be a safe and decentralized alternative to WhatsApp or Telegram, offering end to end encryption and it is available on both iOS and Android.

The fact that communication takes place directly between the users and is also encrypted, place Bleep as one of the best options to consider when using an application to establish secure communications, since no intermediate servers are used.

Finally, users of Android devices should consider SureSpot, which is a sort of combination of WhatsApp and Snapchat with encrypted communications. The service allows you to exchange images, text or voice messages through a secure channel and the possibility to erase, at will, messages we have already sent, while maintaining control of the information we have exchanged. The SureSpot service relies on intermediate servers, therefore, that’s a factor to consider when evaluating its use.

The invention of WiFi, a revolutionary tool that has changed the world.

WiFi (also Wi-Fi) is a technology that allows electronic devices to access to a wireless LAN network. it has evolved at the same time technology has been doing it but, what makes WiFi that special is the possibility it offers to users to get access to a WLAN in any place. Before, it has to be done in a static way, having sit in front of a computer that was connected with a cable to the phone line, where it got the access to internet. Now, thanks to the advances engineers have made, it is possible to depend on a small device that is usually password protected, but may be open, which allows any device within its range to access the resources of the WLAN network.

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The WiFi Alliance defines Wi-Fi as any "wireless local area network". However, the term "Wi-Fi" has been adopted as an English synonym for “WLAN”. It is because for users the word WiFi is easier to pronounce and thanks to it, "Wi-Fi" is a current trademark of the Wi-Fi Alliance. Actually, the "Wi-Fi Certified" trademark can only be used by Wi-Fi products that successfully complete Wi-Fi Alliance interoperability certification testing.

As this new technology allows people to get access to WLAN from different location within the range of the device, new devices has been created thanks to it. For example, new cell phones, better known as smartphones, emerged after the WiFi invention. Cell phones were before used for making and receiving calls but after WiFi invention, phones became into an everyday tool that allows people to get immediate access to e-mail accounts, browsers and social networks. So that, people are in touch easier and information is available in real time.

Social networks has also evolved thanks to WiFi browsers’ invention. Previous social network allowed people to share information and have new friends but since people were not in front of a computer (the only source to get access to them) information people shared was not up-to-date. Now, people’s posts, comments, photos, videos are been shared in real time and their followers or friends (the name depends on the social network) can know if they are in an airport or having a meal in some restaurant. Devices which can use Wi-Fi technology include personal computers, video-game consoles, smartphones,digital cameras, tablet computers and digital audio players as well as printing devices that have the option of sending information wirelessly to another device, both connected to the local network, in order to print a document.
WiFi is a tool that not only has revolutionised the way people communicate but also the way societies behave. Although the discussion here is quite extensive and different sectors have different points of view, there is no discussion that the idea of having access to websites everywhere you are have change people’s habits as well as cities’ urban design.

The potential for WiFi is endless. For example, police can already track criminals in an instant via mugshots being sent over a device, public can be well informed, warned or alerted about unusual situations via Twitter or through the official websites of government institutions or mass media. Or,in healthcare establishments it is possible to notice many major advances using WiFi, such as way-finding tools to get patients to the right location, opportunity to receive feedback on services, information on waiting times, monitoring use of resources around a hospital building and so on.

An enterprising move or wave comes from the plans to ‘connect’ whole cities. The benefits of creating a WiFi solution for whole cities at once clearly is an attractive proposition for both city managers and citizens. For the city it may improve lifestyles. Children now can get access to information that previously were available in books only. They can also be involved in foreign language learning easier that time ago because several companies have designed their teaching programs via Skype and some free platforms where people guide their learning process in the way that better fit for them. Plus, the possibility of working at home does not seem weird because some companies just need their employees have internet access and that’s all, they are hired. In this way, cities reduce their traffic because some people do not need to go out for working, they are doing it from home.

Image courtesy of  Wesley Fryer at Flickr.com

Nevertheless, it has to be taken into consideration they way people is using in a massive way devices that pollutes. This is the most remarkable issue WiFi era has bring up. Global Warming has been accelerated since people acquire and use different WiFi devices.