With more and more people making use of public WiFi hotspots, the lack of effective security on many of those hotspots becomes more of an issue.

Most public access hotspots are "open" with no effective security or encryption. Some commercial services (e.g. BT Openzone in the UK) require you to enter user account details on a home page before you can use the WiFi link for anything useful, but that login info is sent in the clear with no encryption (AFAIK). Public access hotspots with no encryption and no logon screen are even scarier - using one of those, you are effectively broadcasting everything you type so that anyone using a packet sniffer on a laptop can pick up your user names, passwords, bank login details etc.

The iPhone, by design, encourages you to try and keep connected: either via GPRS or EDGE and fall back to WiFi when available - and therein lies the danger....It is easy to fall back to an unsecured hotspot with all the security issues just outlined.

This is where the tech savvy user says: "no problemo, just use VPN....It's already built in to the iPhone - you don't even need to Jailbreak in order to use it".

The trouble with this approach is working out just how to do it.... Most iPhone owners probably don't even know what VPN is, and those that do may be struggling to implement it unless they are using a work VPN (unlikely, as most workplaces still don't support the iPhone) or they have the network chops necessary to set a personal working VPN system up from scratch.

I don't fall into either category; so I was on the look out for a simple third party solution, paid for if necessary, to do the job for me. I investigated a number of options and ended up with www.hotspotvpn.com

I encourage people with a concern about wifi security to check out the webpage - and I can confirm that the cheapest option they offer works very well on the iPhone.

Full Disclosure: I have no connection with HotSpotVPN, I am just a user....There may be other, cheaper (perhaps even free) solutions to this problem out there: I didn't find them. Feel free to suggest other services that help fulfill this important security need.

Kind regards

I like swissvpn or relakks most, quite good service to go with.