this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2025
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European Commission has a "Wifi4EU" initative, provides 93k high-speed private access points across the EU, free of charge. (slrpnk.net)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by Sunny@slrpnk.net to c/technology@lemmy.world
172 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/25779751

The intative promises to be privacy-friendly with no tracking. Stating:

Your privacy is important. The WiFi4EU app ensures a private online experience with no tracking or data collection. Simply connect and enjoy free public Wi-Fi without concerns.

Source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/wifi4eu-citizens

Will be interesting to see how this spans and plays out in reality. Looks promising too, did a quick scan of their builtin permissions and trackers and looks good too. (Scanning tool is called Exodus)

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[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 68 points 3 days ago (8 children)

Title is wrong. It's an old initiative, not even funded anymore. Ran from 2018 to 2020 with 120 Million EUR.

[–] HK65@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

One of their access points has saved my skin twice now in the past 2 months, so I'm happy it exists.

[–] AlsaValderaan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 21 points 2 days ago

A bit offtopic about a pet peeve of mine, but this is why it'd be super nice if social media that end up getting screenshot had absolute timestamps. Thank you for letting us know.

[–] Sunny@slrpnk.net 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

my bad! I misread the context and had not heard of it before - yet living in the EU. I will change the title. I got confused as I saw their post on LinkedIn, and it was posted recently: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/european-commission_wifi4eu-activity-7359136374895046656-oXYi

[–] viking@infosec.pub 7 points 2 days ago

It's still active as in, they maintain the hotspots. But I just had a look at the map, and it looks like there's spotty service mostly clustered around tiny villages, rather than providing coverage to areas that actual get significant tourism or other visitors.

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[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 27 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Leaving the EU is one of the stupidest self harming things we ever did.

[–] ZkhqrD5o@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

And I'm glad that the UK left the EU, because now the EU has its own Cuba in front of its shores. Makes life more interesting, doesn't it?

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 1 points 22 hours ago

I'll not sure I see the parallel.

[–] Jackhammer_Joe@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Who are you?

[–] 46_and_2@lemmy.world 21 points 2 days ago

UK if I have to guess.

[–] davidagain@lemmy.world 6 points 2 days ago

I'm the former prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Tony Blair. Who are you?

[–] hmmm@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago

I want to be European so bad.

[–] hisao@ani.social 108 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (12 children)

It's mind-blowing how at the same time some EU government guys pushing stuff like DSA while other do something like this (which is nice, and a complete opposite, if it's not honeypot anyways).

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[–] LMurch@thelemmy.club 94 points 3 days ago (3 children)

That's cool. Here in the US, we're this close to banning vaccines. *sad trombone sound

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[–] giacomo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 55 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

oh dude, they promised to be privacy friendly! maybe I'm just too american to believe in promises.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 48 points 3 days ago (29 children)

You don't have to trust them any more than you trust your local Starbucks WiFi. We're at the point where your traffic should no longer be vulnerable just because you're on the wrong WiFi network.

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[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 32 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Well I don't know if that's a good use of EU money. I'd rather see investments in large and difficult infrastructure, rail, software, datacenters, industrial sectors we're currently lacking, grid investments - stuff like that.

End user internet access is more like thousands of small decentralised projects. The coordination might make it easier to use compared to if everyone did their own free wifi project, but that's such a small benefit...

[–] Baleine@jlai.lu 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm sure we could invest in all of them and money wouldn't be the problem.

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[–] iglou@programming.dev 10 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

As always, it's not like both aren't possible. As a matter of fact, there is a lot of railway projects ongoing at the same time, to only quote one of your examples.

A government can take care of more than one issue at a time, luckily.

It may be a small benefit for you (I assume you are german based on your server), but not every european country or citizen has the same access to internet. This is a good initiative, but obviously not primarily intended for the richer citizens/countries of the union.

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[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Ahh yes, border free travel.. wait a minute, why are the Austrian police on the border here? Wait a minute, why are they stopping us..

[–] themurphy@lemmy.ml 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Because it's border free travel for EU citizens. It's still another country you enter, as of course, there are rules.

They stop you to check. You obviously pass through.

Also, there's still illegal import rules.

[–] possumparty@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 2 days ago

It's still schengen rules, so if you take a train the likelihood of being stopped at the border is pretty low. Austria may have border agents board the train and verify passports, but that's still pretty uncommon in Europe.

[–] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 29 points 3 days ago (8 children)

I think this is mostly for non-EU tourists. You don't pay for roaming in EU anymore so you don't really need WiFi when traveling.

[–] TheProtagonist@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

Recently mobile phone operators introduced a “fair use policy”, so it’s not really a”roam like at home” anymore, but data volumes can be limited to a fraction of what you are entitled to in your home country.

This is a point where WiFi might get more important again when traveling.

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[–] berty@feddit.org 37 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Do you need that app to connect to a WiFi network?

[–] sivanataraja@lemmy.world 60 points 3 days ago

No, the app is just a map of the hotspots.

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[–] Epzillon@lemmy.world 30 points 3 days ago

If this does what it says on the box its huge

[–] Hule@lemmy.world 15 points 3 days ago (8 children)

Free Wireless ISP, you say?

cheapskate romanian sounds

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[–] Zer0_F0x@lemmy.world 16 points 3 days ago (8 children)

Honestly nowadays data plans are cheap on most mobile carriers and they're obligated to have them work accross EU, so you no longer really need Wi-Fi when traveling.

Also, I can see this being easily and constantly exploited via Wi-Fi attacks where hackers set up fake Hotspots with the same name as the closest legit one.

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 21 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

Meanwhile Czech carrier cartel:

J. Jonah Jameson laugh meme

BTW free Wi-Fi exploits are overrated with widespread HSTS

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