Public WiFi in Buenos Aires, encryption, and VPN's

There are 10 replies in this Thread which has previously been viewed 4,713 times. The latest Post (June 24, 2025 at 11:46 AM) was by Rice.

1st Official Post

    Simple explanation of the dangers of using public WiFi:

    https://www.idropnews.com/news/fast-tech…term=Newsletter

    Use of WiFi service in cafes is popular in Buenos Aires, though I believe most cafes have encrypted networks. We have Fibertel in our apartment, and because it is not completely unusual for us to have periods of service interruptions, we have sometimes needed to flee our own dark spot for a cafe. It has occasionally crossed my mind that, though encrypted, these networks should be used judiciously. Are they safe to use?

    This brings me back to the subject of VPN's. Witopia has been recommended to me for use in Latin American countries. Has anyone any thoughts on Witopia or other VPN's, subsequent to our earlier thread on this subject?

    • Official Post

    We have Cablevisión and I have Nord VPN, a paid VPN, but I barely use it because it chokes the bandwidth tremendously. I just activate it when needed. I tried to use ti to watch Hulu but it was painful -- Hulu, Netflix, HBO and all geo-locked content have measures in place to try identify when you are masking your IP to fake you are in the States, so it is the classic cat chasing the mouse situation. Nord VPN continuously find new server to use, server that haven't yet been blocked by those geo-locked content providers, but I spent more time in finding and connecting to those servers, than to watch the actual programs. Not to mention that just pausing the video meant that the connection was paused and so it took another 1-2 minutes of staring at the screen in the hope the VPN connection would be restored.

    Our internet service has been regular so far, but when we first moved here we had to call Cablevisión Service because there was an old filter installed on the cable which was causing issues. If you have irregular service, maybe it's time to call Fibertel Customer Service and have them check out the wiring/filters.

    For safe interneting the Cloudflare Warp 1.1.1.1 app is a great solution. Not to spoof your geo location. Simple always on VPN that will safely route your traffic through a nearby Cloudflare location in Argentina or wherever you are. A must for public Wifi if you are not already using something else. Recommended to bypass any tracking/profiling that your home internet provider might be doing as well. Install on phones and computers

    1.1.1.1 — The free app that makes your Internet faster.
    1.1.1.1

    Advanced users can open a free Cloudflare Zero Trust account to do much more with secure networking

    Quote from Rice

    Have never heard of this, aficionado . Is it as good as it sounds?

    Cloudflare has been around for 15+ years and a public company for 6. They provide networking services which covers a high percentage of internet traffic. The most well known service is edge network caching CDN where they compete with Akamai, Amazon CloudFront, Fastly, Google Cloud CDN, and perhaps others. All those companies provide CDN service to "cache" website images and other content. So for instance your browsing of ESPN in Buenos Aires does not need to travel all the way to NY to get the latest. Also through these CDN services they protect their customers from attacks.

    ...that is all a great generalization. Anyhow, for that reason it is in their best interest to get as many regular people routed to their servers, thus the hosting customers website content, as reliably as possible. That is why they provide this Warp product for free. Since 2019. I don't think it's the best for me to use at home, but it is easy and the first thing I install until I have time for my other more technical solutions. For non-technical friends and families needing a free public Wifi safeguard it is absolutely a no brainier. If they already know. or think they know a better solution, then great I do not need to discuss further. It has occasional issues where I tell people toggle it on and off, though I feel it occurs less these days.

    Next I would go down the rabbit-hole telling them it is even better in 2025 to use Tailscale free services to route public Wifi through their own home, but I will not do that here in this post.

    Introducing WARP: fixing mobile Internet performance and security
    Today we're excited to announce what we began to plan more than two years ago: the 1.1.1.1 App with WARP performance and security technology. We built Warp…
    blog.cloudflare.com