Personalised Wi-Fi Hotspot login pages to match your business
You can personalise your Wi-Fi Hotspot login pages so your customers feel at home when they’re using your Supafly Wi-Fi Hotspot Service.
You can even integrate these with your own website. Here are a few examples:
Everyone gets a little stuck from time to time and we realise happy customers stem from excellent customer service.
The Supafly Wi-Fi service is already fully supported by phone, email and twitter and we’ve just started a community driven support service, powered by Get Satisfaction.
You can reach our support pages by visiting getsatisfaction.com/polkaspots
Alternatively, look for the little feedback buttons on all our login pages and websites. Like this one:
On our Get Satisfaction pages, you can browse through common problems, support tickets and leave us feedback. Or, ask one of our support members a question directly.
After all, our service can only improve with your help.
To celebrate the arrival of 2011, we’ve launched a new website, rolled out new login screens across our Wi-Fi Hotspot Network and we’ve moved our support pages out on to the community driven Get Satisfaction service. We’ll talk more about Get Satisfaction later.
In November 2009, I travelled over to Zambia to help a local co-operative set-up their PolkaSpots Wi-Fi Hotspot service. Macha Works are rolling-out a pioneering network of satellite Internet connection with the ultimate aim of ‘connecting Africa’.
The BBC have just covered the story. You can watch the video here.
What on earth happened to 2010? Another year’s slipped by and looking back, a lot has happened over the last 12 months, mostly good as well.
But we never look back – life’s moving forward and so is PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi. Despite the recession, we’re at a turning point for the business and hope to have some very exciting announcements for you over the next few months.
We hope you all enjoyed your holidays and look forward to catching up with you soon. Hopefully 2011 will be a good year for all of us!
Simon
We’ve taken the bold move to block Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) users from using the PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi Network.
It wasn’t a decision we took lightly. Our customers’ security is a major priority at PolkaSpots and the vulnerabilities found in IE6 were far too great to continue supporting it.
Old browsers, especially IE6, that haven’t been upgraded are likely to have security vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit.
It’s not just about the person using the old browser we were worried about – it’s all the users at the Hotspot – we need to think about the bigger picture.
For 284 days of 2006, IE6 had a substantial number of un-patched flaws that were being exploited and probed by hackers, viruses, malware and spyware. We found that these flaws were significantly decreasing network performance as well and putting other customers at risk.
As a result, on January 1st 2011, we’ve disallowed access for all IE6 users. The solution is to upgrade to a more secure browser:
Some corporate users are still on the older browser, we still don’t understand why considering the massive security risks…
You can download Firefox for free on all PolkaSpots Supafly Wi-Fi Hotspots.
If you have any questions, please contact support [at] polkaspots dot com or post a question on our Wi-Fi Hotspot support pages…
There’s been a lot of press recently about the security of Public Wi-Fi Hotspots. But is it really the responsibility of the Wi-Fi Provider to keep your data safe? After all, we’re not the ones storing confidential information.
Facebook is particularly vulnerable to such attacks and it’s possible to gain access to someone’s account in a matter of minutes – without needing their username and password. All you need is some freely available (legal*) software. I demonstrated this to some colleagues today by logging into their account in less the 2 minutes. And, once you have the required information, it’s possible to login with their details when you’ve left the Wi-Fi Hotspot. And after they’ve logged out.
If you’re using a Public Wi-Fi Hotspot, make sure the site’s using full encryption – there should be a padlock displayed in your browser and the address should start with https.
Facebook’s vulnerable because only the first login page is encrypted. Because subsequent ones are insecure, it’s quite simple to simply hijack the required information and gain access.
Gmail had problems with this too earlier this year but now all their pages are encrypted. Online banking sites have been secured properly for years so you should be safe with those.
It’s not just Facebook that’s vulnerable. Others include Flickr, Fourquare, Hotmail, Tumblr and WordPress.
But don’t be put off – just make sure the site you’re logging into using encryption throughout, not just on the home page. We’ll cover some more ways to protect yourself later.
* It is not legal to use such software to gain unauthorised access to someone’s information.
The Internet is, without fail, one of the greatest inventions ever – a good reason for it to be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize this year. Unfortunately, everything has an equal and opposite reaction and some people abuse it. It’s therefore very important you protect your customers and business if you’re operating a public Wi-Fi hotspot.
The Supafly Wi-Fi Hotspot service includes Web Filtering to block illegal sites and file sharing. We’ve just launched an Advanced Web Filtering Service that gives you even more control.
You can now control which sites your customers / guests are visiting. You can even decide what time of day they’re allowed to look at them. For example, you might block video streaming at night when it’s most busy.
Antivirus, Antispyware and Antiphishing
The Web Filtering Service, brought to you in partnership with Webroot, scans all HTTP and FTP over HTTP requests for malware in the cloud, blocking threats before they ever reach a company’s network. Best-of-breed antivirus protection guarantees defence against 100% of known virus threats, and multiple zero-hour heuristic filters protect against new and unknown virus variants.
Real-time logs display which sites and downloads users have attempted to access and whether or not they were allowed. With logs accessible for 90 days, you can access the historical information you need to really understand your Hotspot.
Call your PolkaSpots Account Manager on 020 7183 1471.
Since the introduction of the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) early this year, the music industry’s been handing out fines here, there and everywhere to punish illegal Internet downloaders. But what if you receive one and don’t think you did anything wrong – what should you do about it?
Earlier this year, the Digital Economy Bill (DEB) was forced through causing many a sleepless night in the Internet community. And now it would seem that the record labels have been having a blast, throwing fines here there and everywhere. They’ve been given the power to threaten fines but have rarely asked to produce any evidence.
The Ministry of Sound have been caught up recently for sending out 2,000+ letters to people asking for compensation. Most of the people claim they didn’t do it. Whether they did or didn’t is another story.
All these letters are costing the industry a lot of money. At the same time, they’ve made a lot of lawyers a lot richer. Until now, there’s been nothing to stop them from being sent either – no proof was particularly needed. But at last, it looks like the record labels will have to pay the ISPs to send them out.
However even this proposal is turning into a massive fiasco: “The new Act requires the evidential standards to be defined – but Ofcom are leaving this up the rights holders and ISPs to decide in the future”.
What’s more, it looks like the record labels are going to have to predict how many letters they’re going to send out over the next 12 months, and pay in advance. Ridiculous.
You cannot give companies the power to fine the consumer without some control. Likewise, you cannot insist they pay so many months in advance for something that hasn’t happened yet.
The DEB was introduced to reduce online copyright theft and who’d disagree. Downloading illegal movies and music is wrong and it’s damaging the economy. However, the main issue with the bill was the hastiness of it’s introduction which happened overnight.
We need some balance brought to the equation again. As it turns out, most lawyers actually agree that the Bill is unenforceable – the only way to actually fine someone is to prove they downloaded the file by seizing their computer and examining the hard disk.
An acquaintance (hello Russell) was telling me that the movie companies are actaully seeding their movies onto the Internet so they have someone to target. Isn’t that called entrapment?
What’s the next turn the DEB will take? I would hope, with time, that it settles down and we can all get on with providing Internet service to people around the UK. In essence, it’s a good ideas. But until then, we’re just going to have to cope with the endless roller coaster.
