Glynn Taylor of Washington, D.C.-based WiFiConsulting first conceived the idea for HotspotVPN, his firm’s pioneering public virtual private network (VPN) service, at a conference in 2002. Taylor came across a couple of cowboys using sniffer software on a laptop to intercept traffic passing over the conference WLAN. In one private IM session the two were capturing, a man and woman were ending their relationship, messily.

“It was hilarious the names [the couple] were calling each other,” Taylor recalls. “These guys laughed their heads off about it.”

Taylor himself was using a corporate VPN link back to his company’s servers, so he didn’t have to worry about data being intercepted. It occurred to him, though, that a lot of people – Wi-Fi hotspot users in particular – don’t have VPNs, and could be sending usernames, passwords or sensitive company information in the clear. Or embarrassing private conversations.

HotspotVPN, which WiFi Consulting beta tested in 2002 and launched in 2003, was his solution. Client software on the user’s computer establishes a VPN connection over the public network with remote HotspotVPN servers, and then encrypts all data passing over the link. The HotspotVPN servers decrypt the data streams and pass them on to their final destination.

The fact that the data continues to its destination unencrypted is not important because the risk of interception on Internet backbone networks is slim, Taylor says. Corporate VPNs encrypt data end to end, but their main purpose is to protect office systems during remote access rather than securing data as it travels over the public Internet.

The latest generation of the HotspotVPN service uses up to 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) encryption and costs $8.88 to $13.88 a month. Taylor claims his firm’s service was the first and until recently the only one of its kind on the market. “Last year, we were wondering, ‘Why isn’t anybody else doing this?’ Then poof – three that I know of popped up,” he says.  

One of the newcomers is PublicVPN.com. Its VPN service costs $5.95 a month or $59.95 a year. Others include personalVPN from WiTopia.net and SpotLock by JiWire.

All are aimed primarily at frequent users of hotspots who do not already have a VPN connection to their corporate LAN.

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