The Wi-Fi Privacy Ticker: Improving Awareness & Control of Personal
Information Exposure on Wi-Fi 

Anyone within range of an 802.11 wireless network ("Wi- Fi") can use
free software to collect the unencrypted web traffic of others on the
network. However, many Wi-Fi users are completely unaware of the risk
that this creates.  This work aims to improve users' awareness about
what they expose to others on Wi-Fi networks and provide them with
some control. Our system, the Wi-Fi Privacy Ticker, displays
information about the exposure of sensitive terms that are sent to and
from a user's computer and prevents the unencrypted transmission of
terms from the user's computer that she has identified as highly
sensitive. In a three-week field study with 17 participants, we found
that the Wi-Fi Privacy Ticker improved participants' awareness of the
circumstances in which their personal information is transmitted. We
show that this heightened awareness contributed to changes in their
behavior while on Wi-Fi.