Are you increasingly using public Wi-Fi hotspots? If you are, you're in good company, as many more people use public Wi-Fi for work and play. Airports, coffee shops, hotel lobbies, conference centers and many more types of locations are Wi-Fi enabled. Many hotspot hotspot users, though, don't take the right steps to secure their sessions. In this post, you'll find six tips and applications--including both open source and freeware offerings--that you can use to lock down your sessions.

Do you ever use public Wi-Fi hotspots? If you are increasingly using them, you have company. A study done by iPass late last year, showed that work-related hotspot usage was up 68 percent in 2007, relative to 2006. Airports topped the list of public places where users wirelessly connect. The vast majority of hotspot users, though, don't take the right steps to secure their sessions. In this post, I'll cover five free open source and freeware applications you can use to lock down your sessions.