Recently, while travelling, I cam across a hostel which offered wifi, that was authenicated by a facebook or instagram account (as instagram is part of Big Evil Blue, I ask only about facebook in the remainder of this post) instead of the traditional wifi password.
Apart from an interest of how this works at all (authenticating via facebook), I have some questions on this:
- What is the motivation/incentive for the hostel to do so? Is it in any easier/cheaper for the hostel to do away with the traditional method of wifi passwords?
- What is the motivation/incentive for facebook to offer/maintain the infrastructure? Or, is there any infrastructure involved?
- What is there to loose for the user? Clearly, there is some data to be slurped, so be imaginitve in your worst case scenarios.
Bonus question: What may be measures to stop the neighbour of the hostel to use the hostel's wifi with his/her facebook account?