Making Sense of Wi-Fi Sense

Guh. This Wi-Fi Sense crap is confusing when the argument for it doesn’t tell me exactly how it works. So I took the liberty of reading an FAQ about it and well, here we go.

You invite a Skype friend over to your house, covered with a Wi-Fi connection with a password the length of the Articles of Confederation.

Both of you have Windows 10 devices, doesn’t matter which kind.

You want to share you network access with your buddy without having to dig out that dumb post-it. So here’s where Wi-Fi Sense comes to work.

You have to turn it on yourself. Then allow it to share the network you’re connected to to your contacts (Skype, Outlook, Facebook). So what happens now? Here’s the iffy part:

The password is sent to a Microsoft server in an encrypted file (so they say :v). Then they send it (still encrypted and over a secure connection, so they say :v) to your buddy’s devices.

If your friend has Wi-Fi Sense on and allows it to connect to a network shared with Sense, and also is in range of said network, then they can connect without needing to copy your password. Just to note, they’re only given internet access. Any locally shared files or printers on your net are still invisible.

If you turn Sense off, then the password stops streaming around and your friends can no longer connect.

---

So in short.

Yes, you’re sharing your password with people you choose with Wi-Fi Sense turned on and activated. And also with Microsoft itself. The password is supposedly encrypted so neither party theoretically can’t see it.

Compare it to typing your password into a login screen. That text is, hopefully, encrypted and sent over the air to the company’s servers and responds back with access granted. Only this time, it’s giving approved people access, namely your friends, if they’re around.

Again, only with people you choose and only if you turn it on. None of this “sharing with absolutely everyone behind your back” sensationalism.

It’s pretty darn convenient if you ignore the whole middleman thing. If any of this makes you feel a little uneasy, then perhaps you should turn it off.