I don't know if you've heard about the new thing, mobile broadband?
(At least, that's what it's called in the UK, not sure about US, etc.)

You have a small dongle modem which connects to your computer via USB costs about £50, and you can connect to the internet via a mobile phone type connection. The protocol is HSDPA, allows up to 2.8Mb/s I think.

Translation: Broadband connections on the move / No need for fixed line broadband connections with line rental and contracts, etc. !

(Having said that, though both contract and pay-as-you-go options are available, most of the pay-as-you-go deals are very unattractive - e.g. T mobile charges £4 for one day's internet! The one good deal I found if anyone in the UK's interested is from 3; £10 for 30 day's internet, 1gb max transfer. Fine for just browsing)

Two things though. I'm currently typing this on Windows,
if anyone knows a good how-to for connecting the modem to 3's internet on Linux / fancies writing one, I'd be obliged. (The modem itself is a Huawei UMTS Data Card).

Secondly, I was wondering about security. I was just about to purchase something over the internet, then I wondered, just how secure is a mobile broadband connection? Is it merely like unsecured wifi?!?!
How vulnerable to sniffing?


keep smilin',
144419855310001

As far as I know, any mobile broadband device only works in windows, since it uses proprietary dialing software to connect to said servers. Mobile broadband is essentially internet via cellphone modems, either through CDMA or GSM.

Since you are connecting with Windows, a good measure is to first turn on the windows firewall, to block any incoming ICMP packets, and then get a stronger firewall (free one), that will watch anything that tries to send any that you are unaware of, such as a program trying to 'call home' that you have not authorized, etc. Other than that, I think it should be relatively secure.

Mobile devices work fine in linux its a simple dailup connection so its possible to any ppp dailer.

I use mobile broadband from 3 and a datacard i just enter port /dev/ttyUSB0 in yast since i'am using suse

And then i set up the ppp connection with k-internet i have been running it for 3 years now.

Yes, mobile broadband works on any type of operating-system including Linux.

As with any use of the public Internet, you need to have appropriate firewalls and routers. If the information is going out "over the air," and it is important to you, you need to be using VPN or an equivalent secure-tunnel technology since "a radio will pick up the loudest signal that it hears from anywhere," and "will broadcast to anything-and-everything that's in range." You need to be using a tunnel, since this reasonably-assures privacy and message-integrity.

note the OP said this was a UMTS device
thats the allways on 3G mobile phone data service not ppp WAP

Apparently I was wrong about mobile devices under Linux, however I was never able to get my Novatel card to work under Linux. It is an expresscard, not usb. Actually I had no real use for mobile broadband, my dad got it for his work, but turned out he didn't really need it. This was last year, so I am no longer subscribing to any services, but I still have the expresscard.

Wrt security, transactions and precautions everything that applies to wired networks applies here as well. The difference is that since you'll be using the mobile infrastructure on top of things, in other words extra layers, so mobile network "features" like triangulation apply as well. Not that stuff like that would bother you, being a law-abiding netizen...